Excluded, then inebriated: A preliminary investigation into the role of ostracism on alcohol consumption.

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.

Social anxiety, disengagement coping, and alcohol-use behaviors among adolescents.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Although research indicates that social anxiety (SA) is associated with problematic drinking, few studies have examined these relations among adolescents, and all alcohol-related assessments have been retrospective. Socially anxious youth may be at risk to drink in an effort to manage negative affectivity, and a proclivity toward disengagement coping (e.g. avoidance of aversive stimuli) may enhance the desire to drink and learning of coping-related use. DESIGN: Adding to research addressing adolescent SA and alcohol use, the current study examined (1) proportional drinking motives (subscale scores divided by the sum of all subscales), (2) current desire to drink in a socially relevant environment (introduction to research laboratory), and (3) the indirect effect of retrospectively reported disengagement in social stress contexts on proportional coping motives and desire to drink. METHOD: Participants were 70 community-recruited adolescents who reported recent alcohol use. Level of SA, disengagement coping, drinking motives, and desire to drink following laboratory introduction were assessed. RESULTS: Proclivity toward disengagement in prior socially stressful contexts accounted for significant variance in the positive relations between SA and both proportional coping motives and current desire to drink. CONCLUSIONS: These data complement existing work. Continued efforts in building developmentally sensitive models of alcohol use are needed.

Effects of ostracism and sex on alcohol consumption in a clinical laboratory setting.

Drinking to cope with negative affect is a drinking pattern that leads to problematic alcohol use both in college and after graduation. Despite theory and correlational evidence to this effect, establishing a link between stress and alcohol consumption among college students in the laboratory has yielded both a limited number of studies and, at times, inconsistent results. The present study attempts to resolve these issues through investigating the effects of an ecologically relevant stressor-ostracism-on alcohol consumption in a clinical laboratory setting. Social drinking college students (N = 40; 55% female) completed a 5-min game of Cyberball and were randomly assigned either to be included or excluded in the virtual ball-toss game. The amount (in ml) of beer consumed in a subsequent mock taste test served as our primary dependent variable, with breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) as a secondary dependent variable. Results indicated that excluded participants reported a trend toward an increase in negative affect from pre- to post-Cyberball, and endorsed significantly lower self-esteem, belonging, control, and belief in a meaningful existence compared to included participants. A significant Sex × Condition effect indicated that excluded women consumed less beer than both included women and excluded men, supported by a nonsignificant trend in BrAC. Men did not differ in their consumption of beer as a result of Cyberball condition. Implications of sex and social context on alcohol use are discussed, as well as ostracism as a method for investigating relationships between social stress and alcohol use.

Stress Reactivity, Social Anxiety, and Alcohol Consumption in People With Alcoholism: A Laboratory Study.

OBJECTIVE: Social anxiety may maintain alcohol dependence through increased reactivity to stressful events, a propensity to drink to cope with stressful events, or both. The current study is a secondary analysis of an existing dataset that examined differences between individuals with alcohol dependence and concurrent high and low social anxiety in objective and subjective stress reactivity to a laboratory stressor (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST), as well as consumption of alcohol following the stressor. METHODS: Forty participants with alcohol dependence (20 women) were randomly assigned to the TSST condition as part of the parent study. Post-hoc analysis of social anxiety measures yielded high (n = 19) and low (n = 21) social anxiety groups. Participants completed the TSST, followed by a small dose of their favorite alcoholic beverage (target blood alcohol concentration 0.03g/dl) to prime subsequent laboratory drinking. Participants received a sham beer taste test of two glasses (710ml total) of beer. Differences between high and low social anxiety groups was assessed via subjective and objective (mean arterial pressure, serum cortisol) reactivity to the TSST and consumption of alcohol during the taste test (total mls consumed, mls/kg of body weight, and likelihood of consuming all the beer available). RESULTS: No differences emerged in either objective or subjective measures of stress reactivity between high and low socially anxious groups. There were also no differences between social anxiety groups in amount of alcohol consumed during the taste test. CONCLUSIONS: No differences were observed between high and low socially anxious participants with concurrent alcohol dependence on stress reactivity or alcohol consumption following a stressor. Given that all participants in this study had alcohol dependence, negative results may suggest that heightened stress reactivity and drinking to cope are more relevant to the development of alcohol dependence and that other factors may maintain alcohol use once dependence has developed.

Clinical laboratory stressors used to study alcohol-stress relationships.

Understanding the biologic systems that underlie the relationship between stress and alcohol consumption may lead to better prevention efforts and more effective treatments for alcoholism. Clinical laboratory studies offer a unique opportunity to examine these relationships by using a controlled environment to study how an acute stressor affects alcohol drinking and alcohol craving, how individuals in recovery or those at risk for alcoholism may respond differently to stressors relative to control subjects, and how alcohol differentially affects stress reactivity in these groups. This article reviews some of the most common physical, psychological, and pharmacological stressors used in stress-induction studies designed to reveal details about the relationship between stress reactivity and alcohol use and abuse.

Speeches, strangers, and alcohol use: the role of context in social stress response dampening.

According to the Stress Response Dampening model, problem drinking develops after learning that alcohol limits the stress response in anxiety-provoking situations. However, laboratory-based studies testing alcohol's effects on social anxiety have yielded mixed results. The current study was the first to examine stress response dampening across two contexts: a performance-based (a speech) and an interaction-based (a conversation) social situation. Undergraduates (N = 62; M(age) = 22.85; 31% women; 81% Caucasian) were randomly assigned to consume an alcoholic (target BAC = .08%; n = 22), placebo (n = 20), or nonalcoholic control (n = 20) beverage followed by the anxiety-inducing social tasks. Results revealed a 3 (alcohol condition) × 2 (social task condition) × 4 (measurement point) interaction, controlling for baseline subjective state anxiety and trait social anxiety. The pattern of scores over the course of the task varied across alcohol conditions for the speech, but not the conversation. Specifically, participants in the alcohol and placebo conditions evidenced increased subjective anxiety following the first measurement point prior to the speech and their anxiety remained elevated at all subsequent measurements. Participants in the nonalcoholic control condition evidenced stable subjective anxiety ratings for all speech measurement points. Results did not support stress response dampening for either type of social situation. Instead, the only between-group difference found was that the placebo group reported greater subjective anxiety than the nonalcoholic control group after the speech. Concerns about alcohol's negative effects on one's performance might have led to increased anxiety. Findings shed light on previous inconsistent findings and highlight the need to consider context and timing in understanding drinking to cope with social anxiety.

An acute psychosocial stressor increases drinking in non-treatment-seeking alcoholics.

RATIONALE: Although studies suggest that stress is an important reason for relapse in alcoholics, few controlled studies have been conducted to examine this assumption. Evidence of stress-potentiated drinking would substantiate this clinical observation and would contribute to the development of a model that would be valuable to alcohol treatment research. OBJECTIVES: The hypothesis was tested that an acute psychosocial stressor, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), increases alcohol consumption in non-treatment-seeking alcoholics. METHODS: Seventy-nine alcohol-dependent participants (40 women) were randomly assigned to receive the TSST or a no-stress condition. Immediately afterward, all participants received an initial dose of their preferred alcoholic beverage to achieve a target blood alcohol concentration of 0.03 g/dl (to prime subsequent drinking in the laboratory). Participants then participated in a mock taste test of two glasses of beer. Primary dependent measures were whether s/he drank all of the beer available (yes/no) and total amount of beer consumed (milliliters). RESULTS: Stressed participants were twice as likely as non-stressed participants to drink all of the beer available, a significant effect. Although the stressed group drank more milliliters than the non-stressed group, this effect failed to reach significance, likely due to ceiling effects. There were no significant stress group × gender effects on either outcome. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports that stress-potentiated drinking is valid and can be modeled in a clinical laboratory setting.

Attention to social threat as a vulnerability to the development of comorbid social anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorders: an avoidance-coping cognitive model.

Despite the frequent comorbidity of social anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorders, no theoretical model currently exists to explain the specific mechanisms underlying the comorbidity between these two disorders. An integration of existing theoretical models and empirical evidence across the social anxiety and alcohol use literatures is presented as the Avoidance-Coping Cognitive Model, which proposes that socially anxious individuals may be particularly vulnerable to the anxiolytic effects of alcohol through reductions in attention biases to social threat. The disproportionate reduction in anxiety may then make alcohol an attractive method of avoidance coping. Gaps in the empirical literature are reviewed in light of this model as future directions are suggested.

Drinking motives as mediators of social anxiety and hazardous drinking among college students.

Although social anxiety (SA) and alcohol use disorders commonly co-occur, the relationship between these variables in college populations has been inconsistent. The present study tested the hypothesized model that negatively reinforcing, but not positively reinforcing, drinking motives (or reasons for drinking) would mediate the association between SA and three aspects of hazardous drinking (quantity/frequency, consequences, and dependence symptoms) in an ethnically diverse sample of college drinkers (N = 817; mean age = 19.9 years, range = 18-29). Structural equation modeling (SEM) results using the asymmetrical distribution of products test indicated that coping motives partially mediated the relationship between SA and negative consequences and dependence symptoms but not the quantity/frequency outcome. Contrary to the hypothesized model, conformity motives did not mediate the association between SA and hazardous drinking. As expected, positive reinforcement motives did not mediate the SA-hazardous drinking association. Multigroup SEM analyses revealed that the mediation models did not differ for men (n = 215) and women (n = 602). Overall, the present findings support extant research and theoretical models regarding the mediating role of coping motives in the relationship between SA and problem drinking, suggesting a potential pathway for the development and maintenance of SA and alcohol use disorder comorbidity. Such findings could contribute to improved intervention programs by targeting coping drinking motives and building coping skills.

Phenomenological Characteristics of Attentional Biases Towards Threat: A Critical Review.

Although research has consistently revealed the presence of a general attentional bias towards threat, empirical and theoretical ambiguity exists in determining whether attentional biases are comprised of facilitated attention to threat, difficulty in disengagement from threat, or both, as well as whether attentional biases reflect automatic or strategic processes. This paper reviews empirical investigations across 4 common assessment tasks: the Stroop (masked and unmasked), dot probe, visual search, and the Posner tasks. Although the review finds inconsistencies both within and between assessment tasks, the evidence suggests that attentional biases towards threat are comprised of each of the phenomenological characteristics addressed in this paper. Contemporary theoretical models of attentional biases in anxiety are summarized and critically reviewed in light of the current evidence. Suggestions for future research are addressed, including a need to investigate the psychometric properties of the assessment tasks, to utilize consistent theoretically driven operationalizations of attentional biases, and to provide a temporal description of the characteristics of attentional biases towards threat.

The moderating role of health fear on the relation between smoking status and panic symptoms among adolescents.

The present study examined the moderating role of health fear on the concurrent relation between smoking status and panic attack symptoms among 249 adolescents (132 females, M(age)=14.86 years). As hypothesized, youth high in health fear reported elevations in panic attack symptoms, whereas this relation was relatively weak among those low in health fear. Importantly, these associations were significant after controlling for age, gender, negative affectivity, and anxiety sensitivity. Also as expected, health fear did not moderate the association between smoking status and depressive symptoms, supporting model specificity. Results are discussed in terms of implications for the panic-smoking association among youth.