Implicit priming of alcohol expectancy memory processes and subsequent drinking behavior.

Expectations about the effects of alcohol have been modeled as stored memories. This study tested the memory view for investigating the processes that influence drinking. Strategies taken from recent memory research were used to implicitly prime drinking. Consequent effects on consumption of a commercial nonalcoholic beer were measured. Participants were led to believe this beer contained alcohol. Eighty undergraduate women (n?=?20 per cell) participated in 2, apparently unrelated, studies. A 2?×?2 factorial design simultaneously varied videotaped primes (bar setting or neutral video) with semantic primes (expectancy or neutral words). Women exposed to unobtrusive alcohol primes of either type drank significantly greater amounts (p?     

Social and behavioral consequences of alcohol consumption and expectancy: A meta-analysis.

Conducted a meta-analysis on 34 studies that investigated the effects of alcohol consumption and expectancy within the balanced-placebo design. Preliminary results indicated that both alcohol and expectancy had significant but heterogeneous effects on behavior. Subsequent analyses were conducted to determine the factors responsible for the heterogeneity of effects. At the highest level of analysis, alcohol expectancy had strong effects on relatively deviant social behaviors and minimal effects on nonsocial behaviors. Alcohol consumption showed the opposite pattern of effects. The principal effects associated with alcohol expectancy involved increased alcohol consumption and increased sexual arousal in response to erotic stimuli. On the other hand, alcohol consumption led to significant impairment of information processing and motor performance, induced a specific set of physical sensations, resulted in general improvements of mood, and tended to increase aggression. Across all studies it was observed that alcohol consumption and expectancy interacted no more frequently than would be expected by chance. A list of the studies used in the meta-analysis is appended. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive alcohol expectancies and drinking behavior: The influence of expectancy strength and memory accessibility.

College student drinkers (N ?=?314) participated in a health survey in which they (a) completed an alcohol-related memory association task (expectancy accessibility measure), (b) rated their positive expectancies about alcohol use (expectancy strength measure), and (c) reported their level of alcohol involvement. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that both expectancy accessibility and expectancy strength predicted frequency of alcohol use and alcohol-related problems. Moreover, moderational analyses showed that the association between expectancy strength and frequency of alcohol use was greater for those who generated more alcohol responses on the expectancy association task. These findings, suggest that the outcome association measure and Likert scale ratings of expectancies may assess distinct properties of expectancy representations, which may have independent and interactive effects on different aspects of drinking behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol expectancy priming and drinking behavior: The role of compatibility between prime and expectancy content.

According to information-processing models of alcohol use, alcohol expectancies constitute representations in long-term memory that may be activated in the presence of drinking-related cues, thereby influencing alcohol consumption. A fundamental implication of this approach is that primed expectancies should affect drinking only for those individuals who possess the specific expectancies primed. To test this notion, in the present study, participants were initially assessed on 3 distinct domains of positive alcohol expectancies. Approximately 1 week later, they completed an ad libitum drinking study during which only a single expectancy domain (sociability) was primed in the experimental condition. Consistent with predictions, following exposure to sociability primes but not control primes, individuals with stronger expectancies that alcohol would enhance sociability uniquely showed increased placebo consumption of nonalcoholic beer. These results, which demonstrate the moderating role of compatibility between the specific content of primes and that of underlying expectancies, offer new, direct support for memory network-based models of drinking behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of sad mood on cognition.

Neuroimaging has identified an overlapping network of brain regions whose activity is modulated by mood and cognition. Studies of depressed individuals have shown changes in perception, attention, memory, and executive functions. This suggests that mood has a pervasive effect on cognition. Direct evidence of the effect of sad mood on cognition is surprisingly limited, however. Published studies have generally addressed a single cognitive ability per study because the fleeting nature of laboratory-induced mood precludes extended testing, and robust findings are limited to mood effects on memory for emotional stimuli. In this study, sad mood was induced and prolonged, enabling the effects of mood to be assessed for an array of abilities, including those that share neural substrates with sad mood and those affected by depression. Sad mood affected memory for emotional words and facial emotion recognition, but not the other processes measured, with a significant nonuniformity of effect over tasks. These results are consistent with circumscribed effects of sad mood on certain emotion-related cognitive processes, but not on cognition more generally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of expectancy manipulation in systematic desensitization.

Manipulated expectancy, relaxation, and hierarchy content in a 2 * 2 design with 2 additional control groups. Ss were 76 spider-phobic undergraduates. It was hypothesized that a major portion of therapeutic change following desensitization could be accounted for by the Ss' responses to positive feedback inherent in the paradigm. Ss saw either photographs of spiders or blank slides that they believed to be tachistoscopically-presented pictures of spiders. One-half of the Ss believed their progress through the hierarchy to be contingent on autonomic responses; the others believed rate of progress to be random. Findings did not support the hypothesis that expectancy is the only factor in desensitization, but they did clarify the role of expectancy vis-a-vis the counterconditioning elements typically discussed in the literature. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol on eating behavior: influence of mood and perceived intoxication

A 45-year-old male who had looked over pet-birds at a bird shop 11 days before, developed a high fever with chills. Without any response to cephalexin, he was admitted to the hospital, with the chief complaints of high fever and sever headache on the 8th day of illness. The chest X-ray films taken then revealed a fun-shaped ground glass-like shadow extending over S10 of the right lung. After the oral administration of 450 mg rifampicin on the 9th day of illness, he became a febrile within one day and was cured with the same daily doses for the following 10 days. Chlamydia was isolated from the peritoneal exudate of the mice inoculated with throat mucus of the patient taken prior to the administration of rifampicin. Complement fixation reaction for psittacosis was positive in a titer of 1 : 16 on the 11th day of illness and rose to 1 : 64 in a week.     

Effects of alcohol priming on social disinhibition.

Recent studies have suggested that exposure to rudimentary alcohol cues activates mental representations of alcohol expectancies in long-term memory, thereby promoting expectancy-consistent behavior changes. However, reliance in these previous studies on self-report measures raises the possibility that prior findings were an artifact of experimental demand. The present study was aimed at ruling out this alternative explanation by reinvestigating the effects of alcohol priming on nonconsumptive behavior using an implicit measure of social disinhibition. In three experiments, participants were exposed to either alcohol or control beverage images, then asked to type as quickly as possible the first word that came to mind in response to a series of provocative (e.g., feces) and neutral (e.g., chair) stimulus words. Participants’ response times were surreptitiously measured. Results revealed that participants exposed to images of alcohol, relative to control beverages, were faster to generate free associations to provocative, but not neutral, words, suggesting enhanced social disinhibition. This effect was limited to conditions of heightened evaluation, ruling out alternative explanations based on knowledge activation or arousal. Participants reported no suspicions regarding the connection between the image viewing and free association tasks nor any awareness that their response times had been collected. Results suggest that the behavioral effects of alcohol priming do not result from demand characteristics and offer the first evidence that exposure to rudimentary alcohol-related stimuli may suffice to influence social disinhibition in a manner akin to that expected to result from actual or placebo alcohol consumption. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol and expectancy set on male sexual arousal.

Assigned 48 undergraduate males to 8 experimental groups. The 6 Ss within each group received 1 of 4 dose levels (.08, .4, .8, or 1.2 g/kg body weight) of beverage alcohol and 1 of 2 different sets of expectancy instructions regarding sexual arousal. Changes in penile tumescence, in response to an erotic film, were measured physiologically by a mercury-in-rubber strain gauge. Muscle tension levels were also monitored during the film viewing. The following adjunctive measures of sexual arousal were also employed: (a) sexual imagery, (b) the subjective report of arousal, and (c) the estimation of the extent of penile erection. Alcohol significantly reduced the levels of penile tumescence (negative linear relation). The expectancy instructions regarding alcohol's effect did not significantly influence the penile response. Sexual imagery was negatively correlated with penile tumescence, whereas the subjective reports of sexual arousal and the estimations of penile erection were positively correlated with the physiological measure of sexual arousal. Muscle tension levels were not significantly influenced by alcohol or the expectancy set; neither was muscle tension correlated with penile tumescence. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of negative and positive mood phrases on priming of alcohol words in young drinkers with high and low anxiety sensitivity.

This study investigated whether potential emotional cues for drinking activate alcohol concepts in young drinkers. Participants were 84 university freshmen with high or low levels of anxiety sensitivity (AS). A verbal priming task measured activation (i.e., priming) of alcohol concepts (e.g., beer) by positive and negative mood phrases. Time to read alcohol target words was the dependent measure. Negative mood phrases consistently primed alcohol targets; positive mood phrases did not. Degree of negative mood priming did not differ as a function of gender or AS. Reported tendency to drink in bad moods predicted negative mood priming in women, whereas men showed negative mood priming irrespective of their reported drinking tendency. A general association between negative mood priming and severity of alcohol problems also emerged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The P300 as an electrophysiological probe of alcohol expectancy.

Language-based measures indicate that alcohol expectancies influence alcohol consumption. To relate these measures to brain actions that precede verbal output, the P300 component of the Event-related potentials (ERPs) was used to detect violations of individually held alcohol expectancies. As predicted, P300 amplitude elicited by negative alcohol expectancy stimuli was positively correlated with endorsement of positive/arousing alcohol expectancies on the language-based measures, such that the higher an individual's positive/arousing expectancies, the larger was the P300 elicited by negative alcohol expectancy stimuli. These results demonstrated concordance between language-based measures of alcohol expectancies and electrophysiological probes of expectancy. While it remains unknown whether these expectancy processes are integral to decision pathways that influence consumption, these findings suggest that such processing can occur very quickly outside of conscious deliberation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of positive affect on the components of expectancy motivation.

The influence of positive affect on expectancy motivation was investigated in 2 studies. The results of Study 1 indicated that positive affect improved people's performance and affected their perceptions of expectancy and valence. In Study 1, in which outcomes depended on chance, positive affect did not influence people's perceptions of instrumentality. In Study 2, in which the link between performance and outcomes was specified, positive affect influenced all 3 components of expectancy motivation. Together, the results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that positive affect interacts with task conditions in influencing motivation and that its influence on motivation occurs not through general effects, such as response bias or general activation, but rather through its influence on the cognitive processes involved in motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of valence, instrumentality, and expectancy on effort and performance.

Used survey methodology to test an expectancy-valence model of work motivation with 70 male and 76 female Post Office employees in a training program to sort mail. The model predicted self-reported effort fairly well, but correlations with supervisory ratings of effort and performance were lower. Of the 3 components of the model, valence of job outcomes was by far the best single predictor. Support was given to 1 of the 2 multiplicative relationships posited by the model. Implications for future testing of expectancy-valence models with survey methodology are discussed, especially for the measurement of instrumentality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shyness and alcohol response expectancy hypothesis: Social situations.

Suggests a possible link between the use of alcohol to reduce shyness and I. Kirsch's (see record 1986-13702-001) response expectancy hypothesis. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moods as spotlights: The influence of mood on accessibility effects.

Three studies explore the manner in which one's mood may affect the use and impact of accessible information on judgments. Specifically, the authors demonstrated that positive and negative moods differentially influence the direction of accessibility effects (assimilation, contrast) by determining whether abstract traits or concrete actor-trait links are primed. Study 1 investigated the impact of positive versus negative mood on the judgmental impact of trait-implying behaviors and found that positive moods lead to assimilation and negative moods to contrast. In Study 2, this effect was replicated in a subliminal priming paradigm. In Study 3, it was demonstrated that the type of information activated by trait-implying behaviors is indeed mood dependent, such that abstract trait information is activated in a positive mood, whereas specific actor-trait links are activated in a negative mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of mood on categorization: A cognitive flexibility interpretation.

Three experiments test the hypothesis that positive mood facilitates cognitive flexibility in categorization. Study 1 used a sorting task and found that positive mood subjects in relation to subjects in other mood states, formed fewer (broader) categories when focusing on similarities among exemplars and more (narrower) categories when focusing on differences. Study 2 used a within-subject design and assessed more direct measures of flexibility. Study 2 found that compared with neutral mood subjects, positive mood subjects (a) perceived a greater number of both similarities and differences between items, (b) accessed more distinct types of similarities and differences, and (c) listed more novel and creative similarities and differences. Study 3 demonstrated that these effects occur for both positive (mood-congruent) and neutral stimuli and identified intrinsic interest in the task as a possible mediating factor. The implications of these findings for understanding the effects of mood on cognitive organization and processing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the alcohol expectancy memory network: The utility of free associates.

Alcohol expectancies are theorized to operate through associative memory networks. These networks are thought to differ on the basis of individual experience (direct and vicarious) with alcohol. Free-associate probabilities have been used in cognitive psychology as a metric of the associative strength of words to other words; this method has been used to establish the relationships within a semantic memory network. Participants from a large college sample were asked to free associate to the phrase "Alcohol makes me______" They were also asked about their quantity of alcohol consumption. Results showed that specific responses were given with different probabilities by individuals who drank at different levels. The heaviest drinkers tended to have more positive and arousing responses than did lighter drinkers, who tended to have more negative and sedating responses. These results underscore the need to take into account relevant individual differences in behavior and experience when characterizing semantic networks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental alcoholism and the effects of alcohol on mediated semantic priming.

In this study, researchers tested the effects of a moderate dose of alcohol on the spread of activation of associated information in memory using a mediated semantic priming task in which target words are preceded by primes that are either unrelated or indirectly related to the target. Male and female participants with or without a parental history (PH+ and PH-, respectively) of alcoholism were administered the priming task after consuming alcohol or a placebo beverage. Among PH- individuals, alcohol constrained the spread of activation of associated information, as manifested by a reduced priming effect. In contrast, alcohol enhanced priming effects among PH+ participants, though this latter effect appears to be due to a particularly slow response among these individuals to unprimed words. Results are discussed with regard to theories of alcohol's effects on cognitive processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of source credibility attributions on expectancy theory predictions of organizational choice.

A job preview experiment was conducted with 1 between-Ss factor and 1 within-Ss factor. The between-Ss factor was information source in which the 80 female and 54 male 18–48 yr old college students were presented job information from either professional recruiters or job incumbents. The within-Ss factor was information favourability. Each S received 2 previews. One preview contained only positive information about the job, and the other contained some negative information. After exposure to the 2 job previews, Ss completed an expectancy index for each job, a source credibility scale for each preview, and were asked their job choice intentions. Results show that Ss selected the job for which the preview included some negative information more frequently than they did the job for which the preview included only positive information. Both job attractiveness and source credibility were significantly related to job choice. Information source was not related to perceived attractiveness of a job, source credibility, or job choice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional states and memory biases: Effects of cognitive priming and mood.

Recent studies have shown that naturally occurring and experimentally induced affect states enhance the accessibility to retrieval of memories of life experiences that are congruent in valence with the affect state. Previous studies have suggested that this memory bias results from the influence of affective processes on memory retrieval. Ss read statements expressing positive or negative self-evaluative ideas or describing somatic states that often accompany positive or negative mood states. The somatic and self-evaluative statements had, in general, equally strong effects on mood state. However, the self-evaluative statements had a stronger impact on recall latencies for life experiences than did the somatic statements. Moreover, the impact of the self-evaluative, but not the somatic, statements on recall was found to be independent of the statements' effect on mood state. This suggest that the cognitions accompanying a mood-altering experience may have a substantial effect on the capacity of the mood state to influence memory retrieval. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)