The self-schema and addictive behaviors: Studies of alcoholic patients

Abstract

This study deals with the sociocognitive organization of the self-schema in alcoholic patients. It was aimed at understanding how the self-schema takes shape within the framework of social judgments known to be determinants of personality. Alcoholic subjects were interviewed twice, once during their first consultation for treatment and then again four months later after completion of treatment. Our approach was derived directly from the methodology used by Markus (1977) and Clemmey & Nicassio (1997) in their studies on the self-schema. The subjects had to perform three tasks that required manipulating personality traits with positive and negative connotations (a self-description task in which decision time was measured, an autobiographical task, and a recall task). The results of the first interview showed that 1. in their self-descriptions, alcoholics took more time than control subjects both to accept positive traits and to reject negative ones; 2. unlike control subjects, alcoholics considered more negative traits to be self-descriptive than positive traits, and 3. unlike controls, alcoholics recalled more negative traits than positive ones. By the second interview, the results for the alcoholic subjects on the autobiographical and recall tasks had changed: 1. they now described themselves more positively and less negatively than on the first meeting; 2. they recalled a marginally greater number of positive traits and a significantly smaller number of negative traits, and 3. the differences between the alcoholics and controls indicated an improvement in the alcoholics' self-perceptions.