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Chapter 14
Psychology in Our Social Lives
Binge Drinking and the Death of a Homecoming Queen
Sam Spady, a 19-year-old student at Colorado State University, had been a homecoming queen, a class president, a
captain of the cheerleading team, and an honor student in high school. But despite her outstanding credentials and
her hopes and plans for the future, Sam Spady died on September 5, 2004, after a night of binge drinking with her
friends.
Sam had attended a number of different parties on the Saturday night that she died, celebrating the CSU football
game against the University of Colorado–Boulder. When she passed out, after consuming 30 to 40 beers and shots
over the evening, her friends left her alone in an empty room in a fraternity house to sleep it off. The next morning a
member of the fraternity found her dead (Sidman, 2006). [1]
Sam is one of an estimated 1,700 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 who die from alcohol-related injuries
each year. These deaths come from motor vehicle crashes, assaults, and overdosing as a result of binge drinking
(National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2010). [2]
“Nobody is immune,” said Sam’s father. “She was a smart kid, and she was a good kid. And if it could happen to her, it
could happen to anybody.”
Despite efforts at alcohol education, Pastor Reza Zadeh, a former CSU student, says little has changed in the drinking
culture since Sam’s death: “People still feel invincible. The bars still have 25-cent shot night and two-for-ones and no
cover for girls”(Sidman, 2006). [3]
Sam’s parents have created a foundation in her memory, dedicated to informing people, particularly college students,
about the dangers of binge drinking, and to helping them resist the peer pressure that brings it on. You can learn
more at http://samspadyfoundation.org about the foundation.
We have now reached the last chapter of our journey through the field of psychology. The
subdiscipline of psychology discussed in this chapter reflects the highest level of explanation that
we will consider. This topic, known associal psychology, is defined as the scientific study of how
we feel about, think about, and behave toward the other people around us, and how those people
influence our thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
The subject matter of social psychology is our everyday interactions with people, including the
social groups to which we belong. Questions these psychologists ask include why we are often