Modification of affective consequences of alcohol: A comparison of social and solitary drinking.

Using Schachters theory of emotion as a starting point, two predictions regarding the interaction of alcohol consumed in social and solitary situations were tested experimentally. It was predicted that the cognitive circumstances of social drinking would promote an affective response to alcohol, whereas the same objective level of intoxication would be responded to as physical symptoms among solitary drinkers. Additionally, it was predicted that the social manipulation would be effective only to the extent that plasticity was induced, that is, only when alcohol and not placebo was consumed. Both predictions were generally confirmed, using self-report of mood and observer ratings of amusement as dependent variables. It was conjectured that the social circumstances of drinking may be important in determining the reinforcing value of the intoxicated state. There appear to be two distinct sets of assumptions involved in the study of the effects of alcohol and other drugs on affect and behavior. Some researchers have proceeded as though there is a relatively simple correspondence between a pharmacological manipulation and its behavioral consequences. Of this assumption, Schachter (1967) observed: It is this implicit assumption which is, I suspect, responsible for the impression of utter confusion in an area such as psychopharmacology, where it sometimes seems the rule rather than the exception to find a single drug proved in a variety of studies to have blatantly opposite behavioral effects p. 118. In his own influential work, which illustrates the second set of assumptions, Schachter (1964) convincingly argued that many of the behavioral effects of a pharmacological state represent a joint function of that state and the cognitive context in which it occurs. In this view, no drug has invariable consequences for many behaviors, especially socialaffective ones; rather, the pharmacological 1 The experiment was supported by a grant from the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario to the senior author. The authors wish to acknowledge the competent assistance of Soula Homatidis, Ann Wilson, and Henzel Jupiter in conducting the experiment and analyzing the data.