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A survey of 113 college students indicated that drinkers with mature motives for drinking (e.g., drank on special occasions) drank less than drinkers with immature motives (e.g., drank to increase self-confidence) and showed smaller increases 1 year later.
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OBJECTIVES: Empathic accuracy (EA) represents a person's ability to correctly infer the emotions of another person. One past study in men found lower EA for positive emotions after a moderate dose of hard liquor compared to after placebo, particularly among non-hazardous drinkers. The present study aimed to replicate this finding, using a moderate dose of beer and a mixed design. Moreover, we added a novel measure of behavioral empathy. METHODS: Participants (62% men) completed the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Empathy Quotient, and Revised Drinking Motives Questionnaire. Before and after drinking either beer (6.6% alcohol, n = 28) or its 0.0% equivalent (placebo, n = 38), they watched videoclips of targets talking about emotional autobiographical events and rated how targets felt while talking. Behavioral empathy was assessed by presenting participants with painful scenarios and asking whether they would help the people in pain. RESULTS: The previous finding of lower EA for positive emotions after alcohol was not replicated. Nonetheless, after alcohol non-hazardous drinkers were less willing to help people in pain. Trait affective empathy (i.e., a person's long-term disposition to experience emotional responses congruent to another's feelings) and the drinking to cope motive did not significantly moderate the findings. CONCLUSIONS: Although alcohol may alter empathy, its effects are not consistent and may depend on the dose and type of alcohol consumed. The moderating roles of trait empathy and trait aggressivity deserves further study.
Research on social-history variables, personality characteristics, social roles and role confusion, and possible treatment methods for women alcoholics is reviewed. Suggestions for additional studies involving factors motivating drinking in women, theories of personality, new treatment methods, and differentiation between subgroups of women alcoholics are discussed.
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Research since 1968 on the relationship between alcohol and mood is reviewed and updated. There are measurement and methodological barriers to delineating this relationship. The literature is replete with mixed findings that the motivation for drinking alcohol is psychological benefit, tension reduction, or affective improvement. Conflicting and equivocal data have characterized self-reports of depression and other affects in alcoholics. Evidence suggests that alcoholics experience increasing dysphoria as a consequence of alcohol consumption, while nonalcoholics anticipate--and generally attain--elevated moods as a result of drinking. Suggestions are made for further alcohol-mood research.
Hungry rats drink extremely large amounts of water when they are intermittently fed small amount of food (schedule-induced polydipsia). Are such animals motivated to drink for long durations, to ingest large amounts of fluid, or to do both? When drinking-tube apertures were decreased to slow the rate of water ingestion, each of eight rats spent more time drinking (M = 11.5 min) than when larger apertures were used (M = 7.8 min). The mean volumes ingested were not different. These equal volumes were generated by adjustment of each drink duration in accordance with ingestion rate even during the first few drinks of the sessioons, even when the drinking tubes were frequently switched (every 1-3 min) during the sessions. During drinking induced by water deprivation when food was concurrently available, restriction of the driking-tube apertures reduced intake volumes by 18%-19%. However, when food was not concurrently available during water-deprivation-induced driking, regulation of intake volumes was comparable with that found during schedule-induced polydipsia. These data pose difficulties for theories that ascribe a crucial role to the motor aspects of schedule-induced drinking.
1. The self-destructive behavior of chronic, excessive drinking is motivated by self-hatred in combination with ambivalent expressions of ambition and dependency. These sources of vulnerability to alcoholism develop in early childhood. 2. The protective influence of a favorable, stable self-evaluation is indicated by characteristics of occupational groups with a low incidence of alcoholism, such as monarchs and Presidents of the United States. 3. Characteristics of the personal name may influence development of self-esteem. In a small sample of Presidents and brothers of Presidents with drinking problems, most had a brother with the same first name as the admired, successful father. 4. Primary prevention should help parents to recognize the child's need for love, tolerance, and responsibility. These influences enable the child to develop autonomy and self-esteem.
Rats were trained to perform in discrimination learning reinforced by water for 6 days, and were intraperitoneally injected with chlorpromazine, reserpine, or d-amphetamine after each training session. Although chlorpromazine at the dose levels of 0.5 mg/kg or more injected immediately after training impaired learning, the drug did not affect learning when it was injected 60 min after training. Reserpine and amphetamine also impaired learning, but delaying the time intervals between training and injection to 60 min or more had no influence on this learning impairment. Post-trial chlorpromazine and amphetamine had no effect on, but reserpine decreased, motility in the subsequent training session. Chlorpromazine had no effect on water intake in the subsequent session, but reserpine and amphetamine decreased water intake at the dose levels that impaired learning. It was concluded that all three drugs impaired learning, but differed in their effects on learning; chlorpromazine impaired learning by a specific effect on learning itself; reserpine, by a non-specific effect on behavior due to a long acting sedation; and amphetamine, by an effect to decrease the motivation to drink water. The specific effect of chlorpromazine could be related to the hypothesis of "memory trace" synthesis.
Cathodal electrolytic lesions of the medial forebrain bundle (MFB) at posterior hypothalamic levels in male hooded rats produced a mild, transient hypodipsia and lowered jump thresholds to footshock. The lesions produced marked deficits in passive avoidance performance in a paradigm that paired discrete, linearly incrementing footshock intensities with contact of a water spout following 48 hr of water deprivation. Intraperitoneal injections of DL-5-hydroxytryptophan (75 mg/kg), the immediate metabolic precursor of serotonin, had no effect on the passive avoidance performance of either experimental or operated control subjects. Lesions of the MFB also resulted in deficient acquisition in a one-trial step-through passive avoidance paradigm not using motivation to drink and caused a severe acquisition deficit in a one-way active avoidance task. Lesions of the septal nuclei produced lowered jump thresholds but did not affect acquisition in the first passive avoidance task. The results are interpreted as indicating a lesion-induced deficiency in fear learning, independent of the serotonergic functions of the MFB.
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A survey of patients registering at the Boston City Hospital Prenatal Clinic had demonstrated that 9 percent were heavy drinkers. To reduce the health hazards to mothers and children, treatment of heavy alcohol use was integrated with prenatal care. A pediatric neurologist independently examined 322 offspring, including 42 whose mothers were heavy drinkers. Frequency of congenital anomalies, growth retardation, or functional abnormalities among these 42 was twice that of infants born to abstinent or moderate drinking mothers P less than .001). Within that group of 42, there were 15 whose mothers were able to abstain or reduce alcohol intake during the third trimester. These 15 demonstrated fewer abnormalities than those 27 whose mothers had continued heavy drinking (P less than .001). Since pregnant women can be motivated to reduce heavy drinking, treatment programs can benefit both mothers and infants.
For nearly 20 years, disulfiram implanted subcutaneously, has been used in alcoholics who have failed to respond to other treatment. Significantly positive results have been reported in a large number of cases. Despite this extensive use, many questions remain as to how these effects are exerted. As the reaction to alcohol following disulfiram implantation occurs less frequently and in lower intensity than following oral ingestion, psychological mechanisms probably play a vital role. Based in part on out own recent series of cases, the following explanations are offered regarding the possible mechanisms of action: (1) high motivation to stop drinking is manifested by agreeing to the precedure and reinforced by the procedure; (2) palpable presence of hte drug in the site of implantation; (3) generally sufficient reactivity of the agent to indicate activity to the patient;(4) in obsessional patients there is a removal of the fear of resumption of drinking for an extended period of time. For the more sociopathic patients the implant appears to provide a more structured ego boundary to allow the patient to change.
Position preference, i.e., the tendency to drink from onelocation rather than the other, was found to be relatively unimportant in determining the drinking behavior of rats presented with a choice between water and a 7% (v/v) ethanol solution in typical two-bottle choice situations. It accounted for essentially none of the variance in rats generally drinking more alcohol solution than water after prolonged previous alcohol experience, and in rats consuming very little alcohol; only in rats drinking slightly less alcohol solution than water was it found to have an influence. Similarly, bottle preference, i.e., the tendency to drink from one of the two bottles regardless of its position or contents, andposition preference were found to have almost no effect on heavy-drinking rats even on their first day of exposure and on low-drinking rats after about three days of access to alcohol.
Offspring were either adequately nourished or undernourished during the suckling period. They had free access to food from weaning, and were given 2 behavioral tests between 13 and 19 weeks of age. Motivation for water was tested on a variable interval (VI) schedule at 3 levels of deprivation and a test of light-dark discrimination made at 23.5 hr of water deprivation. The results indicated (1) no clear difference in VI response rate, but (2) significant differences in discrimination performance between the 2 groups. A learning ability or certain relevant abilities rather than motivation for water appeared responsible for the difference in discrimination learning.
Power and affiliation motivation was measured among 37 middle-aged females before and after consumption of alcohol in a familiar social setting. The results indicated that, contrary to the findings reported for males, n power and personal power motives declined significantly among moderate-drinking female Ss. Although social power needs increased at all tested levels of alcohol consumption, these increases did not reach statistical significance. Contrary to expectation, affiliation needs declined significantly after only moderate drinking. These results cast some doubt upon the applicability to females of the McClelland, et al. approach for treatment of alcoholism.
Alcoholism among North American Indians and Eskimos is generally considered a major public health and community mental health problem, and increasingly so. All too often alcoholism and alcoholic (and the simple avoidance of these terms) are used indiscriminantly, obscuring important avenues for serious consideration. A major consideration is the extent to which the heavy drinking so common among indian men corresponds to "alcoholism" in the dominant culture. Considerations of culture stress (deculturative and acculturative) and cultural intoxication-permitting factors are essential in any dynamic formulation of Native Americans' problem drinking. A crucial individual motive is that drunkenness can provide short-cut gratification by providing fantasy solutions to culture-bound problems.
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