The long-term goal of the proposed research is to improve understanding of the reinforcing effects of alcohol consumption by studying how individual differences in emotion regulation relate to distress-reducing effects of alcohol. Considerable previous research indicates that alcohol dampens negative affect and is sometimes used in the regulation of psychological distress (see Greeley &Oei, 1999;Sher, 1987). Other work indicates that individuals using less effective emotion regulation strategies are at heightened risk for developing alcohol use problems (Cooper et al., 1995). To date, however, no research has directly tested the extent to which an acute dose of alcohol is differentially reinforcing to individuals differing in emotion regulation styles. The primary purpose of the proposed research is to investigate whether individual differences in emotion regulation modulate alcohol's effects on the distress aroused by errors and negative feedback, using a combined behavioral and psychophysiological approach. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three beverage groups (alcohol, placebo, or control beverage) and then engage in a trial-and-error learning paradigm (Holroyd &Coles, 2002) while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) are recorded. This paradigm is particularly well suited for the proposed work because it taps into performance monitoring processes known to rely on the integration of cognitive and affective processes critical for self-regulation. Individual differences in emotion regulation will be assessed by the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERG;Gross &John, 2003). There are two primary aims of the proposed research. First, the proposed study will test how individual differences in emotion regulation influence performance monitoring and adjustment processes, focusing on potential differences in processing of negative feedback. Second, this work will test how distress-related, electrophysiological responses to errors and negative feedback is affected by the interaction of individual differences in emotion regulation and alcohol, as a way of testing hypotheses concerning individual differences in the reinforcing properties of intoxication. The proposed research has two primary public health implications. First, this work has the potential to improve understanding of affect-regulation processes that put certain individuals at risk for developing alcohol use disorders. Second, and more generally, this work can inform efforts aimed at drinking-related harm reduction by providing key data on the underlying psychological (i.e., cognitive/affective) mechanisms responsible for alcohol's impairment of performance monitoring and adjustment.
