Automatic attitudes and alcohol: Does implicit liking predict drinking?

Abstract

Addictive behaviour has qualities that make it ideal for study using implicit techniques. Addictive behaviours are mediated in part by automatic responses to drug cues, and there is sometimes social pressure to distort self-reports. However, relationships between implicit attitudes and addictive behaviours have been inconsistent. Using a new implicit measure, the affect misattribution procedure (AMP), we found consistent evidence that drinking-related behaviours are systematically related to implicit attitudes. The procedure predicted a behavioural choice to drink beer and self-reported typical drinking tendencies, including hazardous drinking and alcohol-related problems. The AMP showed larger relationships with drinking behaviour than other implicit measures, and explained unique variance in drinking beyond those measures and beyond explicit measures. Though self-presentation distorted self-reports, it did not affect AMP scores. These studies highlight the importance of automatic affective responses in addictive behaviour and suggest a useful means for measuring those responses.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH070573–01 A1), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA021623–01), and the National Science Foundation (0615478).

Notes

¹Because drinker versus non-drinker status and hazardous drinking status were dichotomous variables, we also used logistic regression analysis to predict these variables using each of the implicit measures as independent variables. The logistic coefficients showed the same relationships as the simpler point-biserial correlations reported in Table 1.