Studies that have examined the influence of affect on intoxicated judgment have used naturally occurring mood or other proxies for emotion, rather than manipulating emotions directly. The current study compares the effects of two experimentally manipulated emotional states (anxiety and happiness) on judgments of risk in both intoxicated and non-intoxicated participants. Research on how alcohol affects judgments has focused on the cognitive effects of alcohol, suggesting that alcohol's detrimental effects on thinking may lead to risk taking. Some studies, however, suggest that alcohol may also cause emotions to play a larger role in the decision-making process than they do under conditions of sobriety. The possibility of increased reliance on emotions for judgment under conditions of intoxication is important because emotions bias decision-making in predictable ways and alcohol may exaggerate those biases. The selected emotions may have different effects on risk-taking, with happiness increasing risk-taking, whereas anxiety reduces it. If our hypothesis is correct, we should observe an exaggeration of typical intoxicated risk-taking in the happiness condition, but an amelioration of intoxicated risk-taking in the anxious condition.
Alcohol consumption is associated with negative behaviors such as drunk driving and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. As such, furthering our understanding of intoxicated decision making is important to the formulation of interventions designed to decrease these negative behaviors. If alcohol does increase the influence of emotions on decisions, the most efficient way to influence drunken risk taking may be through activation of emotions that tend to reduce risk taking.
