Several recent psychosocial models of alcohol use and abuse have focused on the role of alcohol outcome expectancies, or the beliefs that people hold about the effects of alcohol on their behavior, moods, and emotions. This proposal describes a research program undertaken to examine the process whereby these beliefs may influence drinking behavior. The goal of this research is to apply principles from research in memory and social cognition to the study of alcohol outcome expectancies and their relationship to alcohol use. A model is proposed in which beliefs about the consequences of drinking motivate alcohol use only to the extent that they are readily accessible in memory in a potential drinking situation. In the first study, procedures developed in research on context effects on memory will be adapted. Subjects will learn lists of negative outcomes of drinking alcohol, using either standard memory instructions or procedures involving the integration of these outcomes with contextual cues. Recall of these lists will then be tested in environmental contexts different from the learning context; it is predicted that memory for the learned expectancies will be enhanced when recall contexts are similar to encoding contexts. The next two studies will use computerized response latency methods to measure the accessibility in memory of alcohol outcome expectancies. Finally, two studies will examine the relationship of alcohol outcome expectancies and the accessibility of these expectancies to drinking measured by both self- report and laboratory drinking. The results from this research will further theoretical understanding of basic cognitive processes that may mediate the contribution of alcohol expectancies to drinking behavior, and may also have important applications for applied research on programs designed to prevent alcohol abuse.
| Stacy, A W (1997) Memory activation and expectancy as prospective predictors of alcohol and marijuana use. J Abnorm Psychol 106:61-73 |
| Weingardt, K R; Stacy, A W; Leigh, B C (1996) Automatic activation of alcohol concepts in response to positive outcomes of alcohol use. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 20:25-30 |
| Stacy, A W; MacKinnon, D P; Pentz, M A (1993) Generality and specificity in health behavior: application to warning-label and social influence expectancies. J Appl Psychol 78:611-27 |
