Greater reinforcement from alcohol for those at risk: parental risk, personality risk, and sex.

Abstract

The effects of a high dose of alcohol (I g ethanoljkg body weight) on physiological and self-report responses to two stressors (electric shock and self-disclosing speech) were compared with the effects of a placebo in three groups of nonalcoholic subjects considered to be at heightened risk for alcohol­ ism by virtue of their (a) having an alcoholic parent (parental risk) or (b) matching a prealcoholic personality profile (personality risk), or (c) having an alcoholic parent and matching a prealcoholic personality profile. These high-risk groups were contrasted with a low-risk group that had neither risk factor. Male and female subjects were tested in each group with appropriate controls for drinking experience and, for female subjects, phase of menstrual cycle. Results indicated that a potentially reinforcing effect of alcohol (its capacity to attenuate physiological responses to stress) was more pronounced in high-risk subjects than in low-risk subjects. This relation was found for both parental risk and personality risk factors and in both male and female subjects. The effects produced by a given dose of alcohol can vary greatly from drinker to drinker. This observation is borne out both by folk wisdom and by laboratory experimentation. Al­ though such individual differences might at one time have been dismissed as random error, the trend in recent alcohol research has been to try to uncover the ways in which variation in the actions of alcohol is linked to variation in characteristics of the drinker. To consider both of these sources of variation at once merges two strands of past investigation that have for the most part proceeded independently. As for the actions of alcohol, some of the best studied have been the impact of alcohol on cognitive performance, on emotion and mood, on physiological responding, on inner states, and on psychomotor performance. As for factors of individual variation, some of the best studied have been past drinking history (and the tolerance that it be­ stows), sex, racial and ethnic heritage, the presence of parental alcoholism, and a number of different personality characteris­ tics. In selecting from among the many possible combinations of factors of individual variation and different effects of alcohol, we were guided by a desire to obtain data that could link indi­ vidual variation and variation in the effects of alcohol within a reinforcement model of the etiology of alcoholism. We considered it desirable to select individual difference fac­ tors related to heightened risk for alcoholism and to select effects of alcohol that could be construed as being positive and