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A social contextual review of the effects of alcohol on emotion
Abstract
Drinking and drinking problems are complex phenomena. Understanding the etiology of alcohol use disorder requires consideration of biological, psychological, and social processes. It is our view that the last of these dimensions is just beginning to receive adequate scrutiny. In this selective review, we discuss the concept of a biopsychosocial analysis of the effects of alcohol. After briefly addressing biological and psychological research on alcohol's emotional effects, we bid to make a case for the vital role that social processes play in understanding why people drink. The bulk of the paper describes research illustrating the contributions that a social psychological perspective can make to advance understanding of the rewarding effects of alcohol. Overall, studies incorporating social contexts have revealed reliable evidence that alcohol enhances emotional experience in many social environments and have identified socio-contextual variables that moderate responses to alcohol. Further, these studies have broadened the scope of constructs thought to be socially rewarding, including social bonding, relationship functioning, and humor enjoyment. Our analysis concludes by identifying research areas we believe would profit from additional research.
... One important reason individuals choose to drink is for alcohol's social rewards (Cooper et al., 2015;Creswell, 2021;Sayette et al., 2016). Humans have a fundamental need to belong and develop relationships with others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and alcohol's well-documented social facilitative effects aid in fulfilling these powerful basic needs (Fairbairn et al., 2015;Goodwin & Sayette, 2022;Sayette et al., 2012). ...
... Alcohol is most often consumed in social settings (Fairbairn & Sayette, 2014;Sayette et al., 2012;Skrzynski & Creswell, 2020, and social factors play a key role in alcohol use and the development of alcohol problems (Cooper et al., 2015;Creswell, 2021;Goodwin & Sayette, 2022). Empathy is likely to play an important role in alcohol use in social settings (Laghi et al., 2019), and increased sensitivity to the rewarding social effects of alcohol might place individuals with lower trait empathy at elevated risk to escalate their drinking and develop alcohol problems (Dolder et al., 2016). ...
... The results indicated a positive association between state affective empathy and number of standard drinks consumed. These findings add to a growing body of work highlighting the importance of social factors in alcohol use and misuse (e.g., Creswell, 2021;Fairbairn & Sayette, 2014;Fairbairn et al., 2015;Goodwin & Sayette, 2022;Kumar et al., 2022aKumar et al., , 2022b. Future research is needed to replicate these findings and explore possible mechanisms for the link between higher state affective empathy and increased alcohol use, as well as individual difference factors (e.g., drinking refusal self-efficacy, impulsivity; Creswell et al., 2019;Laghi et al., 2019) that might moderate the association between state affective empathy and alcohol use. ...
Background
A growing literature documents associations between lower trait empathy and heavier alcohol use and more alcohol problems in adolescent and young adult samples. Prior work linking empathy and alcohol use/problems in these populations has thus far focused on trait rather than state empathy, and researchers often do not differentiate between cognitive and affective empathy. Further, no prior studies have examined associations between daily fluctuations in state empathy and alcohol use. The goal of the current study is to advance knowledge about the associations between state (vs. trait) and cognitive (vs. affective) empathy and alcohol use.
Methods
Adult alcohol drinkers (n = 492; Mage = 22.89, SD = 5.53; 53.70% female) participated in ecological momentary assessment studies for 7 to 10 days (day n = 4683). Multilevel hurdle models were used to investigate associations between day‐level state empathy and daily alcohol use at the within‐person level, and associations between individual differences in trait empathy and alcohol use across days at the between‐person level.
Results
Higher day‐level state affective empathy was not associated with the likelihood of drinking on a particular day, but it was significantly associated with a greater number of drinks consumed on alcohol‐consuming days, with the latter associations remaining after controlling for day‐level positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). No associations were found for day‐level state cognitive empathy, or trait affective or cognitive empathy.
Conclusions
On drinking days, when individuals reported more affective empathy than is typical for them, they were more likely to consume a greater number of alcoholic drinks, results that remained when controlling for levels of PA and NA. Daily shifts in affective empathy may be important to consider in efforts to understand alcohol use.
... the historical and cultural evidence suggesting that alcohol is a social drug, few laboratory alcohol studies have incorporated social contexts (Goodwin & Sayette, 2022). This oversight stands out when one considers that social experiences are powerful motivators. ...
Background
Language is a fundamental aspect of human social behavior that is linked to many rewarding social experiences, such as social bonding. Potential effects of alcohol on affiliative language may therefore be an essential feature of alcohol reward and may elucidate pathways through which alcohol is linked to social facilitation. Examinations of alcohol's impact on language content, however, are sparse. Accordingly, this investigation represents the first systematic review and meta‐analysis of alcohol's effects on affiliative language. We test the hypothesis that alcohol increases affiliative verbal approach behaviors and discuss future research directions.
Methods
PsycInfo and Web of Science were systematically searched in March 2023 according to our preregistered plan. Eligible studies included social alcohol administration experiments in which affiliative verbal language was assessed. We present a random‐effects meta‐analysis that examines the effect of alcohol compared to control on measures of affiliative verbal behavior.
Results
Our search identified 16 distinct investigations (comprising 961 participants) that examined the effect of alcohol on affiliative verbal behavior. Studies varied greatly in methods and measures. Meta‐analytic results demonstrated that alcohol is modestly associated with increases in affiliative verbal behavior (Hedges' g = 0.164, 95% CI [0.027, 0.301], p = 0.019). Study quality was rated using an adapted version of the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies and did not significantly moderate alcohol's effects.
Conclusions
This study provides preliminary evidence that alcohol can increase affiliative verbal behaviors. This effect may be an important feature of alcohol reward. Given heterogeneity in study features, low study quality ratings, and limited reporting of effect size data, results simultaneously highlight the promise of this research area and the need for more work. Advances in language processing methodologies that could allow future work to systematically expand upon this finding are discussed.
Effects of alcohol and cognitive demands on reactions to threat were examined using startle response potentiation to index negative emotion. Men and women received nonalcoholic or alcoholic beverages prior to a series of trial blocks, signaled by light cues indicating that shocks might be delivered (“threat” blocks) or that none would occur (“safe” blocks). Within half of the blocks, participants intermittently viewed pleasant photographic slides. Alcohol attenuated overall startle reactivity, but robust fear potentiation (larger startle magnitudes and shorter latencies during threat versus safe blocks) did not differ by beverage condition. Decomposition of the Beverage × Threat × Slide interaction revealed significant fear potentiation in all conditions, except the one in which alcohol was combined with slides. Thus, dampening of stress response by alcohol may depend on diminished ability to process competing cognitive demands.
The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 49 studies to investigate 2 explanations of how alcohol increases aggression by decreasing sensitivity to cues that inhibit it. Both the level of anxiety and inhibition conflict moderated the difference between the aggressive behavior of sober and intoxicated participants, but neither level adequately accounted for variation in effect sizes. Additional analyses of 3 social psychological moderating variables—provocation, frustration, and self-focused attention—showed that the aggressiveness of intoxicated participants relative to sober ones increased as a function of frustration but decreased as a function of provocation and self-focused attention. The authors also examined the moderating effects of dose.
G. T. Wilson has raised several conceptual and empirical issues with regard to the self-awareness model of alcohol use proposed by the 1st author . Wilson also makes suggestions based on a social learning analysis for improving the model. It is concluded that the 1st author offers a testable model of greater utility in providing new directions for alcohol research than the mainly descriptive social-learning framework offered by Wilson. (19 ref)
Pandemic management is likely to represent a global reality for years to come, but the roadmap for how to approach pandemic restrictions is as yet unclear. Of the restrictions enacted during COVID-19, among the more controversial surround alcohol. Like many infectious diseases, the principal mode of transmission for COVID-19 is direct respiration of droplets emitted during close social contact, and health officials warn that alcohol consumption may lead to decreased adherence to physical distancing guidelines. Governing bodies have acted to close bars before restaurants and have also specifically restricted alcohol sales, while at the same time those in the nightlife industry have labeled such actions unfounded and discriminatory. Complicating such debates is the lack of evidence on alcohol’s effects on physical distance. In the current study we employed a randomized alcohol-administration design paired with computer-vision measures, analyzing over 20,000 proximity readings derived from video to examine the effect of alcohol consumption on physical distance during social interaction. Results indicated that alcohol caused individuals to draw significantly closer to an unfamiliar interaction partner during social exchange, reducing physical proximity at a rate with potentially important implications for public health. In contrast, alcohol had no effect on physical distance with a familiar interaction partner. Findings suggest that alcohol might act to overcome a natural caution people feel towards strangers and thus promote virus transmission between previously unconnected social groups.
Prior research demonstrates contextual influences on drug responses in both animals and humans, although studies in humans typically focus on only one aspect of context (e.g., social) and examine a limited range of subjective experiences. The current study sought to address these limitations by examining the impact of both social and physical context on the full range of subjective alcohol effects. The sample included 448 young adult social drinkers (57% male, 66.5% White) randomly assigned to consume alcohol (target blood alcohol concentration of .08 g%) or placebo in 1 of 4 contexts (solitary lab, group lab, solitary bar, group bar). Results indicated that high arousal positive (HAP) effects of alcohol (e.g., talkative, lively) were stronger in nonbar relative to bar contexts and that low arousal positive (LAP) effects (e.g., relaxed, calm) were only present in the group lab context. There were also main effects of social context such that high arousal effects (both positive and negative) were stronger in group contexts, regardless of beverage condition. These findings highlight the importance of considering context when examining alcohol effects. Studies designed to isolate pharmacological HAP effects may benefit from a nonbar setting, and studies of LAP effects might be most effective in a simulated living room or home environment, although future studies are needed to directly address this possibility. Further, studies with an explicit focus on expectancies or that need strong control for expectancies might benefit from a group context, particularly when studying high arousal effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Aim:
To assess the effects of mood, social and environmental contexts and alcohol-related beliefs on alcohol consumption.
Method:
Participants (N = 69) recorded their positive and negative outcome expectancies and self-reported mood prior to drinking (Time 1 mood). A Smartphone App then enabled alcohol consumption (total number of drinks aggregated from reports throughout a drinking occasion, current mood (Time 2 mood), social context e.g., with friends and environmental location e.g., in a bar/pub to be documented in de facto real-time a total of 3009 data points.
Results:
Feeling unhappy prior to consumption onset was associated with a significant increase in drinking. During a drinking occasion, feeling happy was a significant predictor of drinking larger quantities. Interestingly, however, an interaction between T1 and T2 mood suggested it is not mood prior to consumption which drives drinking, but rather that alcohol consumption elevates mood. Being with two or more friends (relative to being alone) also predicted increased consumption. Positive and negative expectancies were not found to be significant predictors within these models.
Conclusion:
By showing that both mood and social context may shape alcohol behaviors distinctly, the current study suggests that alcohol research and intervention efforts may benefit from greater consideration of the temporally-mediated contextual influences on alcohol consumption.
When analyzing situations in which multiple people are experiencing emotions together – whether the emotions are positive or negative, and whether the situations are online or offline – we are intuitively drawn to the emotions of each individual in the situation. However, this type of analysis often seems incomplete. In many of the cases in which people experience emotions together, there appear to be emergent macro-level affective processes that cannot be readily captured at the individual level. This paper examines these macro-level affective phenomena, termed collective emotions. We open with a general review of research on collective psychological processes. We then define collective emotions and discuss their key features. Next, we focus our attention on the emergent properties of collective emotions and map them using three dimensions: quality, magnitude, and time course. Finally, we discuss pressing open questions and future directions.
Introduction
Ostracism has only recently been investigated as a relevant social stressor that might precede college student alcohol use. The present study continues initial efforts to examine the effects of ostracism on subsequent alcohol consumption in the laboratory. A 2 (sex: male, female) × 2 (condition: ostracism, control) between-subjects experimental design was conducted to examine the effects of these variables on alcohol consumption in the laboratory.
Methods
Social drinking college students (N = 40; 43% female) were randomly assigned to one of two social interaction tasks: either an in-person conversation from which the participant was excluded by two confederates, or independently rating neutrally valenced photographs alongside confederates. Participants then consumed a priming drink (targeted dose = 0.03 BrAC) before completing a mock taste test of up to 710 ml of light beer. Amount consumed (in ml) during the mock taste test served as the primary dependent variable.
Results
The ostracism condition was effective at decreasing mood and psychological need variables (i.e., control, belonging) compared to the control condition. After removing from analyses those who identified the confederates as part of the study (n = 7; 3 control, 4 ostracism), results indicated that males consumed more beer than females, and that ostracized participants trended toward consuming more beer than control participants.
Conclusions
Findings contribute important methodological additions to a burgeoning literature on the effects of ostracism on drinking, and suggest that ostracism may be a valuable addition to studies examining drinking to cope behaviors.
There is considerable interest in understanding the emotional effects of alcohol. While a great deal of experimental research has focused on alcohol’s ability to relieve negative emotions, there has been far less focus on the effects of alcohol on positive emotions. Further, the available research on positive emotion tends to test alcohol while participants are alone. Yet alcohol is often consumed in social settings, and enhancing social pleasure is consistently identified as being a primary motive for drinking. We aimed to address this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of alcohol on positive emotional experience in a social setting. We used the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to examine in a large sample the effects of alcohol on response to comedy in a group setting. Five hundred thirteen social drinkers (51.9% female) were assembled into groups of three unacquainted persons and administered either a moderate dose of alcohol, a placebo, or a nonalcohol control beverage. Following beverage consumption, groups listened to a roughly 5-min comedy clip while their facial expressions were video recorded. More than 5 million frames of video were then FACS-coded. Alcohol consumption enhanced enjoyment (Duchenne) smiles—but not nonenjoyment social smiles—and elevated mood ratings. Results provide multimodal evidence supporting the ability of alcohol to enhance positive emotional experience during a comedy routine delivered in a social context. More broadly, this research illustrates the value of studying emotion in a social context using both self-report and behavior-expressive approaches.
Regular alcohol consumption in unfamiliar social settings has been linked to problematic drinking. A large body of indirect evidence has accumulated to suggest that alcohol’s rewarding emotional effects—both negative-mood relieving and positive-mood enhancing—will be magnified when alcohol is consumed within unfamiliar versus familiar social contexts. But empirical research has never directly examined links between contextual familiarity and alcohol reward. In the current study, we mobilized novel ambulatory technology to examine the effect of social familiarity on alcohol reward in everyday drinking contexts while also examining how alcohol reward observed in these field contexts corresponds to reward observed in the laboratory. Heavy social drinking participants (N = 48, 50% male) engaged in an intensive week of ambulatory assessment. Participants wore transdermal alcohol sensors while they reported on their mood and took photographs of their social contexts in response to random prompts. Participants also attended 2 laboratory beverage-administration sessions, during which their emotional responses were assessed and transdermal sensors were calibrated to estimate breathalyzer readings (eBrACs). Results indicated a significant interaction between social familiarity and alcohol episode in everyday drinking settings, with alcohol enhancing mood to a greater extent in relatively unfamiliar versus familiar social contexts. Findings also indicated that drinking in relatively unfamiliar social settings was associated with higher eBrACs. Finally, results indicated a correspondence between some mood effects of alcohol experienced inside and outside the laboratory. This study presents a novel methodology for examining alcohol reward and indicates social familiarity as a promising direction for research seeking to explain problematic drinking.
Drinking in unfamiliar social settings has long been linked to alcohol problems. A large body of indirect evidence has accumulated to suggest that alcohol’s rewarding subjective effects—both tension relieving and positive-mood enhancing—will be magnified when it is consumed among strangers versus among familiar individuals. But the link between social familiarity and alcohol reward has never been examined. I conducted a meta-analysis of 21 alcohol-administration studies featuring social context (total N = 2,046), examining the effects of alcohol on self-reports of mood and social outcomes and on behaviors in the context of social interactions. Studies were classified according to whether participants involved in the social interaction were previously acquainted prior to study participation (familiarity condition) and also according to other characteristics of the social interaction and alcohol-dosing procedure. Results of random effects metaregression models revealed a significant effect of familiarity in moderating alcohol response, Q(1) = 9.80, p = .0002. Alcohol-related social–emotional enhancement was significantly larger when studies examined interactions among strangers (d = .48, 95% confidence interval [CI: .34, .61]) versus when they examined interactions among familiar individuals (d = .09, 95% CI [−.12, .29]). Of note, in analyses examining self-reports and behaviors separately, findings indicated that alcohol consumption leads to similar behavioral disinhibition across familiar and unfamiliar contexts but that the consequences of this disinhibition for internal subjective experience may differ depending on familiarity. Overall, results suggest that individuals may gain more subjective reward from alcohol in unfamiliar social contexts, pointing to familiarity as a potentially promising line of inquiry for research examining mechanisms of risk for alcohol problems.
Two studies provided evidence that alcohol's relationship to psychological stress is indirect and is mediated by the allocation of attention. Study I found that, as the attentional demands of a distracting activity increased, so did alcohol's reduction of anxiety. Study 2 replicated this effect and found that a highly demanding activity could reduce anxiety even without alcohol. This study further implicated the role of attention in anxiety reduction by demonstrating a relationship between changes in anxiety and response latency to a secondary monitoring task. Finally, in both experiments, intoxicated subjects who did not perform any activity showed an increase in anxiety. From these data, we argue that alcohol affects psychological stress, to an important degree, through its ability, in conjunction with ongoing activity, to affect the amount of attention paid to stressful thoughts.
Background:
There are limited longitudinal data on the associations between different social contexts of alcohol use and risky adolescent drinking.
Methods:
Australian prospective longitudinal cohort of 1943 adolescents with 6 assessment waves at ages 14-17 years. Drinkers were asked where and how frequently they drank. Contexts were: at home with family, at home alone, at a party with friends, in a park/car, or at a bar/nightclub. The outcomes were prevalence and incidence of risky drinking (≥5 standard drinks (10g alcohol) on a day, past week) and very risky drinking (>20 standard drinks for males and >11 for females) in early (waves 1-2) and late (waves 3-6) adolescence.
Results:
Forty-four percent (95 % CI: 41-46 %) reported past-week risky drinking on at least one wave during adolescence (waves 1-6). Drinking at a party was the most common repeated drinking context in early adolescence (28 %, 95 % CI 26-30 %); 15 % reported drinking repeatedly (3+ times) with their family in early adolescence (95 % CI: 14-17 %). For all contexts (including drinking with family), drinking 3+ times in a given context was associated with increased the risk of risky drinking in later adolescence. These effects remained apparent after adjustment for potential confounders (e.g. for drinking with family, adjusted RR 1.9; 95 % CI: 1.5-2.4). Similar patterns were observed for very risky drinking.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that consumption with family does not protect against risky drinking. Furthermore, parents who wish to minimise high risk drinking by their adolescent children might also limit their children's opportunities to consume alcohol in unsupervised settings.
Motivation has long been recognized as an important component of how people both differ from, and are similar to, each other. The current research applies the biologically grounded fundamental social motives framework, which assumes that human motivational systems are functionally shaped to manage the major costs and benefits of social life, to understand individual differences in social motives. Using the Fundamental Social Motives Inventory, we explore the relations among the different fundamental social motives of Self-Protection, Disease Avoidance, Affiliation, Status, Mate Seeking, Mate Retention, and Kin Care; the relationships of the fundamental social motives to other individual difference and personality measures including the Big Five personality traits; the extent to which fundamental social motives are linked to recent life experiences; and the extent to which life history variables (e.g., age, sex, childhood environment) predict individual differences in the fundamental social motives. Results suggest that the fundamental social motives are a powerful lens through which to examine individual differences: They are grounded in theory, have explanatory value beyond that of the Big Five personality traits, and vary meaningfully with a number of life history variables. A fundamental social motives approach provides a generative framework for considering the meaning and implications of individual differences in social motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record
Men and women differ dramatically in their rates of alcohol use disorder (AUD), and researchers have long been interested in identifying mechanisms underlying male vulnerability to problem drinking. Surveys suggest that social processes underlie sex differences in drinking patterns, with men reporting greater social enhancement from alcohol than women, and all-male social drinking contexts being associated with particularly high rates of hazardous drinking. But experimental evidence for sex differences in social-emotional response to alcohol has heretofore been lacking. Research using larger sample sizes, a social context, and more sensitive measures of alcohol's rewarding effects may be necessary to better understand sex differences in the etiology of AUD. This study explored the acute effects of alcohol during social exchange on speech volume-an objective measure of social-emotional experience that was reliably captured at the group level. Social drinkers (360 male; 360 female) consumed alcohol (.82 g/kg males; .74 g/kg females), placebo, or a no-alcohol control beverage in groups of 3 over 36-min. Within each of the 3 beverage conditions, equal numbers of groups consisted of all males, all females, 2 females and 1 male, and 1 female and 2 males. Speech volume was monitored continuously throughout the drink period, and group volume emerged as a robust correlate of self-report and facial indexes of social reward. Notably, alcohol-related increases in group volume were observed selectively in all-male groups but not in groups containing any females. Results point to social enhancement as a promising direction for research exploring factors underlying sex differences in problem drinking. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
Background
To identify drinking contexts toward which prevention efforts should be directed, associations of context‐specific alcohol use (past‐year frequency of drinking and heavier drinking in the context) with a range of alcohol‐related problems were examined in a population sample of adolescents.
Methods
A sample of youths (ages 15 to 18) residing in 50 medium‐to‐large California cities (n = 473 drinkers) was obtained. Respondents provided information about 7 past‐year alcohol‐related problems in 3 domains (physiological consequences, alcohol‐related violence, and conflict/trouble) and the number of times in the past year they used 6 distinct drinking contexts (parties, restaurants/bars, parking lots/street corners, beaches/parks, respondent's home without parents, and someone else's home without parents). Context‐specific dose–response model was estimated for each context using censored Tobit models with heteroskedasticity corrections.
Results
Physiological problems were associated with more frequent drinking in 5 of 6 contexts. Heavier drinking in restaurants/bars/nightclubs (b = 0.22, SE = 0.10) and someone else's home without parents (b = 0.14, SE = 0.06) was associated with greater risk of violence. Conflict/trouble was associated with more frequent drinking in parking lots/street corners, declining at higher levels of drinking.
Conclusions
Certain drinking contexts are related to problems among youths, some because they are associated with frequent alcohol consumption and others because they are associated with heavier drinking. Identifying which drinking contexts are related to specific alcohol‐related problems and why is an essential component of developing effective preventive interventions.
Alcohol is commonly used to cope with social pain, but its effectiveness remains unknown. Existing theories offer diverging predictions. Pain overlap theory predicts that because alcohol numbs physical pain it should also numb people to the negative effects of ostracism. Alcohol myopia predicts that because alcohol intensifies salient emotions it should enhance the negative effects of ostracism. We conducted a field experiment in a bar, exposing individuals to ostracism or inclusion using Cyberball on an iPad. Subjective intoxication, but not blood alcohol concentration, was associated with less distress for participants who were ostracized, and more distress in participants who were included. We conclude that alcohol reduces both the pain of ostracism and the pleasure of inclusion.
Researchers have hypothesized that men gain greater reward from alcohol than do women. However, alcohol-administration studies in which participants were tested when they were drinking alone have offered weak support for this hypothesis. Research has suggested that social processes may be implicated in gender differences in drinking patterns. We examined the impact of gender and alcohol on “emotional contagion”—a social mechanism central to bonding and cohesion. Social drinkers (360 male, 360 female) consumed alcohol, placebo, or control beverages in groups of three. Social interactions were videotaped, and both Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiling were continuously coded using the Facial Action Coding System. Results revealed that Duchenne smiling (but not non-Duchenne smiling) contagion correlated with self-reported reward and typical drinking patterns. Importantly, Duchenne smiles were significantly less “infectious” among sober male groups versus female groups, and alcohol eliminated these gender differences in smiling contagion. Findings identify new directions for research that explores social-reward processes in the etiology of alcohol problems.
The personality trait of extraversion has been linked to problematic drinking patterns. Researchers have long hypothesized that such associations are attributable to increased alcohol-reward sensitivity among extraverted individuals, and surveys suggest that individuals high in extraversion gain greater mood enhancement from alcohol than those low in extraversion. Surprisingly, however, alcohol administration studies have not found individuals high in extraversion to experience enhanced mood following alcohol consumption. Of note, prior studies have examined extraverted participants-individuals who self-identify as being highly social-consuming alcohol in isolation. In the present research, we used a group drinking paradigm to examine whether individuals high in extraversion gained greater reward from alcohol than did those low in extraversion and, further, whether a particular social mechanism (partners' Duchenne smiling) might underlie alcohol reward sensitivity among extraverted individuals. Social drinkers (n = 720) consumed a moderate dose of alcohol, placebo, or control beverage in groups of 3 over the course of 36 min. This social interaction was video-recorded, and Duchenne smiling was coded using the Facial Action Coding System. Results indicated that participants high in extraversion reported significantly more mood enhancement from alcohol than did those low in extraversion. Further, mediated moderation analyses focusing on Duchenne smiling of group members indicated that social processes fully and uniquely accounted for alcohol reward-sensitivity among individuals high in extraversion. Results provide initial experimental evidence that individuals high in extraversion experience increased mood-enhancement from alcohol and further highlight the importance of considering social processes in the etiology of alcohol use disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
Differential sensitivity to alcohol effects (e.g., increased stimulation and decreased sedation) is associated with heavier use and problems. Although genetic factors contribute to alcohol response (AR), environmental factors may also play a role. This study examined effects of physical context on AR using a between subjects placebo-controlled design. There were 157 (57% male) participants (ages 21-30) who were randomized to 1 of 4 conditions based on beverage (placebo or alcohol [target BrAC = .08 g%]) and physical context (simulated bar or traditional lab). AR was assessed using the Subjective Effects of Alcohol Scale and the Biphasic Alcohol Effects Scale, as well as behavioral tasks including the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and its negative reinforcement counterpart (MRBURNS). A beverage condition by context interaction emerged for low arousal positive subjective response (SR), and among women, for performance on the BART task. In the lab context only, alcohol (relative to placebo) was associated with stronger low arousal positive SR and, for women, with impaired performance on the BART task. This suggests that a less stimulating lab context may be better suited to differentiating positive alcohol effects from expectancies, whereas a bar context may be better suited to detecting expectancy effects. The findings also suggest that the ability to better appreciate positive alcohol effects (relative to expectations) in less stimulating contexts may lead to a strengthening of these effects among individuals who drink in these environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
Conventional wisdom and survey data indicate that alcohol is a social lubricant and is consumed for its social effects. In contrast, the experimental literature examining alcohol's effects within a social context reveals that alcohol does not consistently enhance social-emotional experience. We identify a methodological factor that might explain inconsistent alcohol-administration findings, distinguishing between studies featuring unscripted interactions among naïve participants (k = 18) and those featuring scripted social interactions with individuals identified as study confederates (k = 18). While 89% of naïve-participant studies find positive effects of alcohol on mood (d = 0.5), only 11% of confederate studies find evidence of significant alcohol-related mood enhancement (d = -0.01). The naïve-participant versus confederate distinction remains robust after controlling for various moderators including stress manipulations, gender, group size, anxiety outcome measure, and within-group consistency of beverage assignment. Based on the findings of our review, we propose a multidimensional, social-attributional framework for understanding alcohol-related reward. Borrowing organizing principles from attribution theory, the social-attributional approach predicts that alcohol will enhance mood when negative outcomes are perceived to be unstable and/or self-relevant. Our framework proposes that alcohol's effects within a social context are largely explained by its tendency to free individuals from preoccupation with social rejection, allowing them to access social rewards. The social-attributional approach represents a novel framework for integrating distinct, well-validated concepts derived from several theories of alcohol's effects. It further presents promising lines of inquiry for future research examining the role of social factors in alcohol reward and addiction susceptibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
The last 25 years have seen significant advances in our conceptualization of alcohol use and alcohol use disorders within a developmental framework, along with advances in our empirical understanding that have been potentiated by advances in quantitative methods. These include advances in understanding the heterogeneity of trajectories of alcohol outcomes; new insights about early childhood antecedents, and adolescence and emerging adulthood as important developmental periods for alcohol outcomes; a more nuanced understanding of the influences of developmental transitions, and their timing and contexts; a greater appreciation for the importance of considering multiple levels of analysis (including an increasing number of genetically informative studies); a continuing focus on studying multiple pathways underlying alcohol outcomes; and an increasing focus on studying the effects of alcohol exposure on future development. The current paper reviews these advances and suggests directions for future study.
Stress response dampening is an important motive for alcohol use. However, stress reduction via alcohol (alcohol SRD) is observed inconsistently in the laboratory, and this has raised questions about the precise mechanisms and boundary conditions for these effects. Emerging evidence indicates that alcohol SRD may be observed selectively during uncertain but not certain threats. In a final sample of 89 participants, we measured stress response via potentiation of defensive startle reflex in response to threat of shock in blocks with certain (low and high) and uncertain shock intensity. Our alcohol-administration procedure produced blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) across a broad range (0.00%-0.12%) across participants. Increasing BACs were associated with linearly decreasing startle potentiation and self-reported anxiety. This SRD effect was greater during uncertain than certain threat. More broadly, these results suggest that distinct mechanisms are involved in response to threats of uncertain intensity and threats of certain intensity.
According to alcohol expectancy theory, drinking-related information is stored in memory and, when cue activated, influences alcohol-related behavior. Priming of alcohol cues and expectancies has been shown to elicit both drinking and nonconsumptive behavior associated with alcohol consumption, such as willingness to meet with a stranger and aggression. These social influence effects have been shown to be moderated by individual differences in alcohol expectancies. In the present study, we tested whether an alcohol prime would facilitate social group bonding even in the absence of consumption, and whether such group bonding would be moderated by individually held social expectancies. One hundred twenty undergraduates (75% female) completed an alcohol expectancy measure prior to participation. Participants were primed with either alcohol or neutral beverage words and completed a collaborative group activity followed by questionnaires measuring perceived group cohesion. Several interactions were found between condition and expectancy reflecting that those in the alcohol prime condition with higher social alcohol expectancies reported greater cohesion on task-related, but not emotion-related, group measures. These findings underscore the complexity of the impact of expectancy and social behavior on drinking: the priming of alcohol expectancies may activate aspects of pro-social behavior, which may influence drinking, which in turn may feedback to positively reinforce social expectancies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Alcohol’s effects on reactivity to stressors depend on the nature of the stressor and the reactivity being assessed. Research that identifies characteristics of stressors that modulate reactivity and clarifies the neurobehavioral, cognitive, and affective components of this reactivity may help prevent, reduce, or treat the negative impacts of acute and chronic alcohol use and have implications for other psychopathology involving maladaptive reactivity to stressors. We used a novel, multimeasure, cued, electric-shock-stressor paradigm in a greater-university community sample of adult recreational drinkers to test the effects of alcohol ( n = 64), compared with no alcohol ( n = 64), on reactivity to stressors that vary in both their perceived certainty and controllability. Preregistered analyses suggested alcohol significantly dampened subjective anxiety (self-report) and defensive reactivity (startle potentiation) more during uncertain stressors than during certain stressors regardless of controllability, which suggests that stressor uncertainty—but not uncontrollability—may be sufficient to enhance alcohol’s dampening of stress reactivity and thus negative reinforcement potential.
Williams’s need-threat model proposes that ostracism responses are reflexive and, because of their evolutionary significance, difficult to diminish. Alcohol is widely consumed in social contexts and for reasons of coping with social stress, and major theories of alcohol propose that intoxication disrupts cognitive appraisal of environmental threats, leading to stress relief. Surprisingly, though, no well-powered experimental research has examined the impact of alcohol intoxication on distress from social ostracism. In three studies across two independent laboratories ( N = 438), participants were randomly assigned to receive either an alcoholic or nonalcoholic (i.e., no-alcohol control or placebo) beverage and were exposed to an ostracism (or social inclusion) manipulation. Results, which emerged as remarkably consistent across all studies, indicated strong and consistent effects of ostracism on mood and needs satisfaction among both intoxicated and sober participants. Findings have important implications for ostracism theory and speak to boundary conditions for alcohol’s ability to relieve stress.
Background
Despite the social nature of most drinking experiences, prior work has largely failed to incorporate social context into the study of alcohol's effects on emotion. The present study provides an initial test of the effect of alcohol on mood among platonic friends drinking together in a non‐stress setting. We hypothesized that subjects would report more positive postdrink mood after consuming alcohol than after consuming a nonalcoholic control beverage.
Methods
Dyads of platonic male friends (n = 36; 55.55% White, 38.88% Asian, 5.55% Black) attended two laboratory‐based experimental sessions, wherein their drink conditions (alcohol vs. no alcohol control) were randomized by dyad and counter‐balanced across sessions. They reported their mood before and after consuming their beverages together, using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and an 8‐item mood measure.
Results
As hypothesized, alcohol enhanced positive mood (β = 0.26, p < 0.01). Although in the expected direction, the effect of alcohol on negative mood was not significant (β = −0.12, p = 0.17). Post hoc analyses revealed that alcohol yielded greater increases in both stimulation (β=0.26, p = 0.00) and sedation (β=0.40, p = 0.00) as compared to the control condition.
Conclusion
This study highlights the positive mood‐enhancing and broader subjective effects of alcohol when drinking with a platonic friend and encourages further consideration of friendship contexts in the examination of alcohol's effects when developing models of the etiology of alcohol use disorder.
The context in which drinking occurs is a critical but relatively understudied factor in alcohol use disorder (AUD) etiology. In this article, I offer a social-contextual framework for examining AUD risk by reviewing studies on the unique antecedents and deleterious consequences of social compared with solitary alcohol use in adolescents and young adults. Specifically, I provide evidence of distinct emotion regulatory functions across settings, in which social drinking is linked to enhancing positive emotions and social experiences, and solitary drinking is linked to coping with negative emotions. I end by considering the conceptual, methodological, and clinical implications of this social-contextual account of AUD risk.
Background and aims
Solitary drinking in adolescents and young adults is associated with greater risk for alcohol problems, but it is unclear whether this association exists in older demographics. The current paper is the first meta‐analysis and systematic review to determine whether adult solitary drinking is associated with greater risk for alcohol problems.
Methods
PsychINFO, PubMed, and Google Scholar were searched following a pre‐registered PROSPERO protocol (CRD42019147075) and PRISMA methodology. Following the methodology used in our recent systematic review and meta‐analysis on adolescent/young adult solitary drinking, we systematically reviewed solitary drinking measures/definitions, prevalence rates, and associated demographic variables in adults. We then meta‐analyzed (using random effects models) associations between adult solitary drinking and alcohol use/problems, negative affect, and negative/positive reinforcement‐related variables (e.g., drinking to cope or for enhancement).
Results
Solitary drinking was defined as drinking while physically alone in nearly all studies, but measures varied. Prevalence rates were generally in the 30‐40% range with some exceptions. In general, males were more likely than females to report drinking alone, and married individuals were less likely than unmarried individuals to report drinking alone; racial/ethnic differences were mixed. Meta‐analytic results showed significant effects for the associations between solitary drinking and the following factors: alcohol consumption, r=0.25, 95%CI [0.18, 0.33], k=15, I²=97.41; drinking problems, r=0.15, 95%CI [0.10, 0.21], k=14, I²=92.70; and negative reinforcement, r=0.24, 95%CI [0.14, 0.32], k=11, I²=91.54; but not positive reinforcement, r=0.02, 95%CI [‐0.06, 0.09], k=8, I²=76.18; or negative affect, r=0.03, 95%CI [‐0.02, 0.08], k=8, I²=52.06. Study quality moderated the association between solitary drinking and negative affect (β=‐0.07, p<0.01) such that lower quality studies were significantly associated with larger effect sizes. Study quality was generally low; the majority of studies were cross‐sectional.
Conclusions
Solitary drinking appears to have a small positive association with alcohol problems.
Social scientists have documented the power of being heard: Disclosing emotional experiences to others promotes mental and physical health. Yet, far less is known about how listeners digest the sensitive information people share with them. We combined brain imaging and text analysis methods with a naturalistic emotional disclosure paradigm to assess how listeners form memories of others' disclosures. Neural and linguistic evidence support the hypothesis that listeners consolidate memories for others' disclosures during rest after listening and that their ability to do so facilitates subsequently providing the speakers with support. In Study 1, brain imaging methods showed that functional connectivity between the dorsomedial subsystem (dorsomedial pFC) of the default network and frontoparietal control network increased during rest after listening to others' disclosures and predicted subsequent memory for their experiences. Moreover, graph analytic methods demonstrated that the left anterior temporal lobe may function as a connector hub between these two networks when consolidating memory for disclosures. In Study 2, linguistic analyses revealed other-focused thought increased during rest after listening to others' disclosures and predicted not only memory for the information disclosed but also whether listeners supported the speakers the next day. Collectively, these findings point to the important role of memory consolidation during rest in helping listeners respond supportively to others' disclosures. In our increasingly busy lives, pausing to briefly rest may not only help us care for ourselves but also help us care for others.
Background and aims
Emerging evidence suggests that solitary drinking may be an important early risk marker for alcohol use disorder. The current paper is the first meta‐analysis and systematic review on adolescent and young adult solitary drinking to examine associations between solitary drinking and increased alcohol consumption, alcohol problems, and drinking to cope motives.
Methods
PsychINFO, PubMed, and Google Scholar were searched using the PRISMA methodology and a pre‐registered PROSPERO protocol (#CRD42020143449). Data from self‐report questionnaires regarding negative correlates of solitary drinking (e.g., alcohol problems) and solitary drinking motives (e.g., drinking to cope) were pooled across studies using random effects models. Studies included adolescents (ages 12‐18) and young adults (mean age between 18‐30 or samples with the majority of participants age 30 or younger).
Results
Meta‐analytic results from 21 unique samples including 28,372 participants showed significant effects for the associations between solitary drinking and the following factors: increased alcohol consumption, r=0.23, 95%CI [0.13,0.33]; drinking problems, r=0.23, 95%CI [0.13,0.32]; negative affect, r=0.21, 95%CI [0.16,0.26]; social discomfort, r=0.17, 95%CI [0.06,0.27]; negative reinforcement, r=0.28, 95%CI [0.24,0.31]; and positive reinforcement, r=0.10, 95%CI [0.03, 0.17]. These associations were not moderated by age group (i.e., adolescent versus young adult), study quality, or differing solitary drinking definitions. Accounting for publication bias increased the effect sizes from r=0.23 to 0.34 for alcohol consumption and from r=0.23 to 0.30 for drinking problems, and lowered it from r=0.10 to 0.06, and r=0.17 to 0.11, for positive reinforcement and social discomfort, respectively.
Conclusions
Solitary drinking among adolescents and young adults appears to be associated with psychosocial/alcohol problems and drinking to cope motives.
Many social interactions involve alcohol consumption, and drinking alcohol can lead to powerful increases in enjoyment in these social contexts. Yet we know almost nothing of the means by which alcohol enhances social experience. Importantly, since individuals in social contexts not only respond to environmental conditions, but can also actively generate these conditions, understanding alcohol's social enhancement within wholly un-structured social interaction presents challenges. To address this issue, the current study examines responses of individuals participating in a structured pleasurable experience in social context (humor presentation)-a drinking context with ecological-validity that permits us to test theories of alcohol-related social-enhancement through isolating responses to the controlled presentation of pleasurable stimuli (i.e., comedy punchlines). Participants (N = 513) were randomly-assigned to consume an alcoholic, placebo, or control beverage in the laboratory. Participants were video-recorded during presentation of a comedy routine in 3-person groups, and participants' Duchenne smiles were recorded on a frame-by-frame basis using the Facial Action Coding System. Comedy punchlines were coded by five raters and validated via an independently collected sample of participants (N = 30). Results of nested frailty survival models, controlling for the smiles of other group members, indicated a significant interaction between punchlines and alcohol in predicting smiles. Specifically, alcohol selectively increased smiling during times when no humorous stimuli were being presented, whereas there was no significant effect of alcohol on smiling in response to the humorous stimuli themselves. Findings highlight the importance of less intrinsically entertaining social moments for understanding alcohol-related social enhancement .
Objective:
Although research has documented harms associated with drinking within intimate relationships, there is evidence that some drinking patterns-characterized by congruent or shared partner drinking-may be associated with positive relationship functioning. The present dyadic daily diary study allowed us to consider whether congruent drinking events and drinking with partner increase the likelihood of experiencing intimacy with one's partner within the next few hours.
Method:
Within a sample of 119 community couples in which both partners drank regularly, we studied the temporal relationship between drinking events and intimacy experiences using 56 days of daily reports. To ensure that the pattern of results was robust, we tested the effects of congruent versus noncongruent drinking events using different characterizations.
Results:
Drinking episodes involving simultaneous drinking by both partners (but not solo drinking) increased the likelihood of intimacy in the next few hours. Similarly, drinking episodes in which partner was present (but not episodes when partner was absent) and drinking episodes that took place at home (but not away from home) increased the likelihood of intimacy.
Conclusions:
Results provide the first evidence that some types of drinking events contribute to the occurrence of couple intimacy experiences within the next few hours and help to explain previously observed long-term effects of congruent drinking patterns on couple functioning.
Objective:
College men's alcohol consumption is positively associated with sexual aggression perpetration, yet men's drinking does not typically predict later sexual assault after accounting for risk factors, such as impersonal sexuality. In the present study, we tested an indirect effects model whereby college men's impersonal sex orientation and heavy episodic drinking (HED) were hypothesized to contribute to sexual aggression perpetration via more frequent attendance at drinking venues (parties, bars).
Method:
Freshman males (N = 1,043) were recruited to participate in a five-semester study. Key measures included the Sociosexuality Index as a measure of impersonal sex attitudes and behaviors, frequency of HED, and frequency of attending drinking venues (parties, bars). The dichotomous outcome measure was based on the Sexual Strategies Survey, a measure of tactics used to convince a female partner to have sex. Structural equation modeling was used to examine whether sociosexuality attitudes, sociosexuality behaviors, and HED (all measured at Wave 1) would have direct and indirect effects on use of Wave 5 sexual aggression tactics, through effects on Wave 3 venue attendance.
Results:
The model supported the hypothesized indirect effects of sociosexuality and HED via men's subsequent drinking venue attendance and was preferred over alternative models.
Conclusions:
College men who more frequently attended drinking "hot spots" were more likely to perpetrate subsequent sexual aggression, supporting a growing body of evidence on the importance of drinking venues in college sexual assault. Findings also help to explicate the mechanism underlying the robust role of impersonal sex orientation in sexual aggression.
Background
Researchers have long sought to understand how individuals respond to alcohol in social settings with the aim of elucidating pathways of risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD). But studies that incorporate a social context are still outnumbered by those that examine alcohol's subjective effects among participants drinking alcohol in isolation. Further, perhaps due to the challenges of capturing automatic affective processes in these settings, prior studies of alcohol response in social context have relied mainly on self‐report measures, and so relatively little is known about alcohol's psychophysiological effects in social settings.
Methods
Using a novel paradigm that integrated alcohol‐administration procedures, startle methodology, and social context, the current study examined the impact of alcohol and social context on startle eyeblink reflex among 40 social drinkers.
Results
Results indicated that there was a significant effect of group presence, indicating that startle magnitude was larger when people were alone than with others. There was a significant group presence by alcoholic beverage interaction, with the effect of alcohol being significantly larger when people were alone versus with others. These effects were found both for the startle habituation data and during the picture viewing task.
Conclusions
Results of this study highlight the importance of considering the presence of other individuals for understanding alcohol response and mechanisms of AUD risk. Findings are discussed in light of both emotional and also cognitive correlates of startle reflex magnitude. Future research should examine these effects within larger samples of participants and further explore mechanisms that might underlie these effects.
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Objective:
Research shows that solitary drinking is associated with negative reinforcement motives (i.e., relieving negative affect). An untested hypothesis proposes that this association may be especially strong for individuals who experience social discomfort. This study aimed to 1) replicate findings linking solitary drinking to social discomfort (i.e., loneliness, social anxiety, and lack of perceived social support), alcohol problems, and drinking in response to negative affect (i.e., drinking to cope motives and inability to resist alcohol during negative affect), and 2) investigate whether greater social discomfort moderates the relationship between drinking in response to negative affect and solitary drinking in underage drinkers.
Method:
Current alcohol drinkers ages 18 to 20 (N=664) recruited from a TurkPrime panel reported the percentage of time they drank solitarily and completed measures assessing social discomfort, drinking in response to negative affect, and alcohol involvement. Structural equation modeling was used to test the moderation model.
Results:
Results replicated prior literature supporting the first aim. For the second aim, analyses indicated a positive association between solitary drinking and drinking in response to negative affect across all individuals, but contrary to prediction, this relationship was stronger for individuals with lower, rather than higher, social discomfort.
Conclusion:
Underage drinkers with lower, rather than higher, social discomfort appear to be at greater risk for drinking alone. These findings may inform our understanding of individuals at greatest risk for drinking alone and promote new avenues for intervention.
Recently research has begun to focus on the social causes and consequences of alcohol consumption. While some of this research has been correlational in nature (e.g., investigating the relationship between peer pressure to drink and self-reports of alcohol consumption), a sizable body of research has accumulated that adopts a strictly experimental approach. The hallmark of this tradition is the random assignment of subjects to different experimental conditions. Research that employs such an experimental approach has examined the effects of alcohol on such diverse topics as aggression, sexual arousal, moods and emotion, self-disclosure, risk taking, assertiveness, moral judgment, social influence, helping, and social interaction. Experimental research has also examined the effects of a variety of social settings on the consumption of alcohol. It is the purpose of this chapter to provide a broad overview of this experimental literature on the social causes and consequences of alcohol consumption.
Understanding why people drink alcohol and in some cases develop drinking problems has long puzzled researchers, clinicians, and patients alike. In the mid-1940s and early 1950s, experimental research began to systematically investigate alcohol’s hedonic properties. Presumably, alcohol consumption would prove reinforcing as a consequence of its capacity either to relieve stress or to brighten positive emotional experiences. This article reviews experimental research through the years examining the impact of alcohol on both the relief of negative affect and the enhancement of positive affect. It covers initial accounts that emphasized direct pharmacological effects of ethanol on the central nervous system. These early studies offered surprisingly tepid support for the premise that alcohol improved emotional states. Next, studies conducted in the 1970s are considered. Informed by social learning theory and employing advances derived from experimental psychology, this research sought to better understand the complex effects of alcohol on emotion. Coverage of this work is followed by discussion of current formulations, which integrate biological and behavioral approaches with the study of cognitive, affective, and social processes. These current perspectives provide insight into the particular conditions under which alcohol can boost emotional experiences. Finally, future research directions and clinical implications are considered.
Individuals who are unhappy in their intimate partnerships are at risk for developing alcohol problems. But little is known about the mechanisms underlying this link. One possibility is that couples with poor relationship quality gain more reinforcement from alcohol in certain contexts—a possibility that has never previously been empirically examined. In the current study, 304 individuals (152 couples) were assigned to receive alcohol (target BAC .08%) or a nonalcoholic beverage. They then engaged in a conflict-resolution interaction with their partners. Videotaped interactions were coded by trained observers. Results revealed a significant interaction between alcohol and relationship quality across multiple measures. Alcohol decreased negative behaviors, decreased negative reciprocity, and enhanced self-reported experience to a greater extent during interactions involving individuals reporting low relationship quality and had comparatively little effect among those reporting high relationship quality. Findings point to a potential mechanism underlying problem drinking among couples with poor relationship quality.
The study of alcohol use and abuse has for the most part been steeped in the biomedical model that emphasizes the overriding importance of the pharmacological properties and physiological consequences of alcohol. Of course, alcohol is a potent drug and biomedical analyses are vital to our fuller understanding of its effects. However, the inappropriate overextension of the biomedical model to psychological phenomena that cannot be reduced to the physical effects of alcohol has retarded the development of effective means for the assessment and treatment of alcohol abuse. It is for this reason that perhaps the most important feature of the behavioral approach lies in the alternative conceptual model it provides for understanding and modifying patterns of alcohol use and abuse. The details of the behavioral model are discussed elsewhere (Bandura, 1969). Suffice it to state here that this model entails a rejection of the quasi-disease or psychodynamic model of psychopathology and regards abnormal behavior that is not a function of specific brain disturbance or biochemical disorder as governed by the same principles that regulate normal behavior. Examples of alcohol-related phenomena that are customarily ascribed to the alleged physiological or psychodynamic effects of alcohol but which are more accurately explained in terms of a cognitive-behavioral analysis are discussed below.
This study examined the personality traits of negative emotionality and constraint and the ability to resist drinking during negative affective states as correlates of solitary drinking in adolescence. We hypothesized that higher levels of negative emotionality and lower levels of constraint would predict solitary drinking and that these relationships would be mediated by the ability to resist drinking in response to negative emotions.
Structural equation modeling was used to fit a path model from the personality traits of negative emotionality and constraint to solitary drinking status through intermediate effects on the ability to resist drinking during negative emotions using cross-sectional data.
Clinical and community settings in Pennsylvania, USA.
The sample included 761 adolescent drinkers (mean age = 17.1).
Adolescents completed the Lifetime Drinking History, the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire, the Constructive Thinking Inventory, and the Situational Confidence Questionnaire.
The path model provided good fit to the data. The association between trait negative emotionality and solitary drinking was fully mediated by adolescents' ability to resist drinking during negative affective states (OR=1.05, b=.05, p=.01). In contrast, constraint had a direct effect on solitary drinking (OR=.79, b=-.23, p<.01), as well as an indirect effect through the ability to resist drinking during negative affective states (OR=.97, b=-.03, p=.02).
The ability to resist drinking while experiencing negative feelings or emotions may be an important underlying mechanism linking trait negative emotionality (a tendency toward depression, anxiety, and poor reaction to stress) and constraint (lack of impulsiveness) to adolescent solitary drinking.
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Over the last quarter century, researchers have peered into the living human brain to develop and refine mechanistic accounts of alcohol-induced behavior, as well as neurobiological mechanisms for development and maintenance of addiction. These in vivo neuroimaging studies generally show that acute alcohol administration affects brain structures implicated in motivation and behavior control, and that chronic intoxication is correlated with structural and functional abnormalities in these same structures, where some elements of these decrements normalize with extended sobriety. In this review, we will summarize recent findings about acute human brain responses to alcohol using neuroimaging techniques, and how they might explain behavioral effects of alcohol intoxication. We then briefly address how chronic alcohol intoxication (as inferred from cross-sectional differences between various drinking populations and controls) may yield individual brain differences between drinking subjects that may confound interpretation of acute alcohol administration effects.
Objective:
Although couples' alcohol use has been associated with intimate partner aggression and poorer marital functioning, few studies have examined the proximal effects of alcohol on couple interactions. The current experimental study examined the effects of alcohol, administered independently to male and female intimate partners, on positive and negative interaction behaviors within a naturalistic conflict resolution paradigm.
Method:
Married and cohabiting couples (n = 152) were recruited from the community and each partner randomly assigned to receive either alcohol (target dose: .08 mg/kg) or no alcohol. They engaged in two 15-minute interactions regarding current disagreements in their relationship, one before and one after beverage administration. Videotaped interactions were coded by trained observers using the Rapid Marital Interaction Coding System, and positive and negative interaction behaviors were analyzed using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model.
Results:
Participants displayed decreased negativity and increased positivity following alcohol consumption when their partners were sober but no differences in negativity or positivity when their partners also consumed alcohol. There were no gender differences. Although participants with a history of perpetrating intimate partner aggression displayed more negativity, prior aggression did not interact with beverage condition.
Conclusions:
The immediate effects of alcohol consumption on couple interaction behaviors appeared more positive than negative. Contrary to hypotheses, congruent partner drinking had neither particularly positive nor particularly negative effects. These unique findings represent a rare glimpse into the immediate consequences of alcohol consumption on couple interaction and stand in contrast to its delayed or long-term effects.
Propensity for alcohol misuse may be linked to an individuals' response to alcohol. This study examined the role of alcohol response phenotypes to future drinking problems.
One hundred four young heavy social drinkers participated in a within-subject, double-blind, placebo-controlled laboratory alcohol challenge study with 6-year follow-up. Participants were examined for subjective responses before and after receiving an intoxicating dose of alcohol (.8 g/kg) or a placebo beverage, given in random order. Follow-up was conducted in 5 waves over 6 years after the sessions to assess drinking behaviors and alcohol use disorder (AUD) symptoms. Retention was high with 98% (509 of 520) of possible follow-ups completed.
Greater sensitivity to alcohol, in terms of stimulation and rewarding effects (like, want more) and lower sensitivity to alcohol sedation predicted greater number of AUD symptoms through 6 years of follow-up. Cluster analyses revealed that for half the sample, increasing levels of stimulation and liking were predictors of more AUD symptoms with the other half divided between those showing like and want more and want more alone as significant predictors.
The findings extend previous findings and offer new empirical insights into the propensity for excessive drinking and alcohol problems. Heightened alcohol stimulation and reward sensitivity robustly predicted more alcohol use disorder symptoms over time associated with greater binge-drinking frequency. These drinking problems were maintained and progressed as these participants were entering their third decade of life, a developmental interval when continued alcohol misuse becomes more deviant.