Shaken & Stirred: effect alcohol portrayals in movies on attitudes toward alcohol and self-alcohol associations

ABSTRACT

Background: Little experimental researches have investigated how alcohol portrayal influences alcohol-related cognitions that could lead to long-term alcohol consumption. We identified two potential cognitive processes by which alcohol portrayals could lead to increased change in alcohol consumption: changes in implicit attitudes and association between the active self-concept and alcohol.Methods: We tested participants (n = 87) to see if incidental exposure to alcohol portrayals in movies resulted change in indirect measures of attitudes toward alcohol and self-alcohol association. Results showed that participants exposed to alcohol portrayals had more negative implicit attitudes toward alcohol after watching the movie.Results: Participants showed stronger self-alcohol association in the alcohol portrayal condition compared to the control condition, and this effect was stronger for participants that liked the James Bond series.Conclusions: Perspectives related to long term alcohol consumption are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluative learning
• alcohol portrayals
• indirect measures
• self-alcohol association

Disclosure of potential conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded in part by the Academic Research Community (ARC) 1 Santé from the region Rhones-Alpes (France).