Alcohol mediated aggression is destructive apparent in assault, murder, suicide, and traffic accident statistics. Considerable experimental work has replicated this relationship but only recently has there been an indication of what mechanisms may be involved. Specifically, the findings that intoxicated subjects evidence modified patterns of attention and affective arousal thus resulting in increased aggression suggest a line of inquiry where aspects of this functioning can be explored. A number of experiments are therefore proposed where attentional and affective arousal factors are manipulated in an attempt to elucidate their role in the production of alcohol-mediated aggression. The general experimental paradigms of the proposed studies involve subjects participating in selective attention or aggression tasks in either an intoxicated, placebo or sober condition. Psychological states are effected by manipulating personal salience of information, degrees of environmental control and momentary affective arousal. It is generally hypothesized that while alcohol mediates, in fact, exacerbates, aggression this relationship in turn is or can be mediated by psychological states. It is therefore expected that intoxicated individuals will preferentially attend to negative personally-salient information and that transient affective arousal will result in increased aggression. It is also expected that intoxicated individuals will preferentially attend to negative information under uncontrollable stress conditions and that alcohol-mediated aggression will decrease with an increase in subject-perceived control. Such findings could well form the basis for a positive psychologically-based intervention stragegy with individuals whose drinking results in problems of aggression to others and themselves.
| Zeichner, A; Allen, J D; Giancola, P R et al. (1994) Alcohol and aggression: effects of personal threat on human aggression and affective arousal. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 18:657-63 |
| Zeichner, A; Allen, J D; Petrie, C D et al. (1993) Attention allocation: effects of alcohol and information salience on attentional processes in male social drinkers. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 17:727-32 |
