Men and women, alcohol and aggression.

The purpose of this study was to examine the acute effects of alcohol on aggressive behavior in men and women in a laboratory setting. Participants were 526 (261 men and 265 women) healthy social drinkers between 21 and 35 years of age. They were randomly assigned to either an alcohol or a placebo group. Aggression was measured using a modified version of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm in which electric shocks are received from, and delivered to, a same gender fictitious opponent during a supposed competitive interpersonal task. Aggression was operationalized as the intensity and duration of shocks that participants administered to their "opponent." Overall, men were more aggressive than women. Alcohol increased aggression for both men and women but this effect was stronger for men. This is one of the first laboratory studies to demonstrate that alcohol increases aggression in women.

Alcohol and aggression: a test of the attention-allocation model.

This article presents the first systematic test of the attention-allocation model for alcohol-related aggression. According to this model, alcohol has a "myopic" effect on attentional capacity that presumably facilitates aggression by focusing attention on more salient provocative, rather than less salient inhibitory, cues in hostile situations. Aggression was assessed using a laboratory task in which mild electric shocks were received from, and administered to, a fictitious opponent. Study 1 demonstrated that a moderate-load cognitive distractor suppressed aggression in intoxicated subjects (to levels even lower than those exhibited by a placebo control group). Study 2 assessed how varying the magnitude of a distracting cognitive load affected aggression in the alcohol and placebo conditions. Results indicated that the moderate-load distraction used in Study 1 (i.e., holding four elements in sequential order in working memory) suppressed aggression best. Cognitive loads of larger and smaller magnitudes were not successful in attenuating aggression.