Risk for alcoholism and individual differences in the stress-response-dampening effect of alcohol.

In two experiments, individual differences in the effects of a 1 g/kg dose of alcohol on physiological and affective responses to stress were found to be related to characteristics thought to relate to risk for alcoholism. In the first study of 95 male nonalcoholics, subjects considered to be at heightened risk for alcoholism on the basis of high scores on the MacAndrew Alcoholism scale (MAC) of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) were found to show much more pronounced reduction of their cardiovascular and affective responses to stress when they consumed alcohol than did their low-risk controls. In the second study of 82 male nonalcoholics, a similar finding for cardiovascular responses to stress was observed when risk was predicated on the basis of low scores on the Socialization (So) scale of the California Psychological Inventory (or on the basis of combined risk on both the MAC and So). These results are interpreted as indicating that the outgoing, aggressive, impulsive, and antisocial individuals who are identified by these measures (and who have been shown to have a high incidence of alcoholism in prospective studies) may find alcohol consumption particularly reinforcing by virtue of their obtaining a greater amount of alcohol's stress-response-dampening (SRD) effect when they drink. These findings along with those concerned with the effects of alcohol on prestressor physiological and affective levels are discussed, and an etiological model of alcoholism that incorporates individual differences in the SRD effects is proposed.