The influence of alcohol on the activation of outcome expectancies: The role of evaluative expectancy activation in drinking behavior

Objective: Despite the well-established finding from questionnaire studies that positive expectancies are associated with drinking behavior, there is comparatively little known about the mechanisms through which they may affect drinking behavior. Incentive motivation models suggest that alcohol itself may alter the value of the expected outcomes of drinking. The current study was designed to examine the influence of low-dose alcohol on the activation of alcohol outcome expectancy value. Method: Forty-eight hazardous drinkers (34 men) between the ages of 21 and 35 years were recruited from advertisements in local newspapers for a social drinking study. Participants, whose most frequently consumed beverage was beer, were administered a dose of either alcoholic (8.5%) beer, based on gender and weight to reach a blood alcohol concentration of 40 mg/dl, or an equivalent volume of placebo beer. Following an absorption phase, a computerized evaluative priming task was completed in which participants made a series of judgments about the value of positive and negative outcomes following either alcohol or neutral word primes. Results: Those who consumed alcohol made faster evaluative responses to positive relative to negative outcomes, compared with individuals who consumed the placebo beverage. Conclusions: These findings suggest that moderate doses of alcohol may influence the incentive value of positive relative to negative outcome expectancies. It is suggested that these processes may play a role in patterns of hazardous alcohol use. (J Stud. Alcohol 64: 111-119, 2003).