Mechanisms underlying alcohol-approach action tendencies: the role of emotional primes and drinking motives.

Janna Cousijn,Reinout W Wiers,Maartje Luijten

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2014.00044

Abstract

The tendency to approach alcohol-related stimuli is known as the alcohol-approach bias and has been related to heavy alcohol use. It is currently unknown whether the alcohol-approach bias is more pronounced after emotional priming. The main aim of this study was to investigate whether positive and negative emotional primes would modulate the alcohol-approach bias. For this purpose, a new contextual emotional prime-approach avoidance task was developed, containing both negative and positive emotional primes. Explicit coping drinking motives were expected to be related to an increased alcohol-approach bias after negative primes. Results of 65 heavy and 50 occasional drinkers showed that the alcohol-approach bias was increased in both groups during negative emotional priming. This appeared to be due to slower alcohol avoidance rather than faster alcohol approach. This change in alcohol-approach bias was positively related to explicit enhancement drinking motives and negatively related to alcohol use-related problems. A stronger alcohol-approach bias in heavy compared to occasional drinkers could not be replicated here, and coping drinking motives were not related to the alcohol-approach bias in any of the emotional contexts. The current findings suggest that both occasional and heavy drinkers have a selective difficulty to avoid alcohol-related cues in a negative emotional context. Negative reinforcement may therefore be involved in different types of drinking patterns. The influence of emotional primes on alcohol-related action tendencies may become smaller when alcohol use becomes more problematic, which is in line with habit accounts of addiction.

Highlights

Researchers have distinguished between implicit or relatively automatic cognitions on the one hand and explicit cognitive processes on the other
Heavy drinkers compared to occasional drinkers scored higher on all drinking motives (DMQ-S social, coping, excitement, and conformity)
The findings showed that the primed emotional context influenced the approach bias in both occasional and heavy drinkers

Summary

Introduction

Researchers have distinguished between implicit or relatively automatic cognitions on the one hand and explicit cognitive processes on the other. Implicit cognitions are spontaneously activated and require little resources, whereas explicit cognitions are more related to conscious decision making and rational weighing of pros and cons of behavioral options [1,2,3,4]. Many studies have demonstrated that implicit and explicit cognitions predict unique variance in alcohol use and problems [for meta-analyses see Ref. A number of studies have demonstrated that individual differences in executive control capacity moderate the relative balance between implicit and explicit cognitions, with implicit cognitions having a stronger influence on behavior in individuals with relatively weak executive control [(7–10); for review see Ref. Implicit cognitions including attentional bias, approach bias, and implicit memory associations toward alcohol-related cues seem to have an important role in the development of alcohol-related problems [3]. Implicit and explicit cognitions have recently been placed on a continuum, with implicit cognitions representing initial information processing that can lead to action and explicit cognitions representing more elaborate information processing [11,12,13]

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