This proposal requests support for a program of research concerning individual differences in psychological and physiological effects of alcohol consumption in stressful situations and the importance of these effects for understanding the process of development of alcoholism. The research uses nonalcoholic subjects who can be considered to be at varying risk for alcoholism by virtue of their sex, personality, and family history of alcoholism. The research program includes studies in which subjects are exposed to stress under varying conditions of alcohol consumption and alcohol expectation to determine the effects of alcohol on their psychophysiological and behavioral responses to stress. In another kind of study, subjects are exposed to stress to determine effects of stress on their consumption of alcohol. The overarching hypothesis of this program is that nonalcoholic subjects who are at high risk for alcoholism will derive a maximal reduction in the magnitude of their psychophysiological responses to stress when they consume alcohol, and further that these subjects will tend to consume greater amounts of alcohol when exposed to stress. The proposed research is divided into six experiments which will systematically explore the effects of dosage, type of stress, sex differences, and risk factors as they relate to the alcohol-stress relationship.
