FREE ESSAY ON ALCOHOL & AGGRESSION

ALCOHOL & AGGRESSION

Relating Alcohol to Aggressive Behavior
From the beginning of recorded history, alcohol has been a part of human culture.
However, it appears that the correlation between alcohol and violent aggression is a
trait solely to the American culture. So the question that must be answered is 'Is it the
alcohol, or is it the individual's expectancies while under the influence of alcohol?'.
There has been piles of research done in an effort to answer this question and still the
relationship between alcohol and aggression remains a mystery. In examining some of this
research, there are some recurring themes and theories. The Expectancy Theory states that
its is not the alcohol that causes aggressive behavior, but a person's expectations of
what the alcohol does to oneself. A similar theory, but one worth mentioning, is the
Attention Based Theory. It states that when using alcohol, a person's cognitive resources
are reduced. This causes a person to concentrate on only a few things, including emotion
at the time, and pretty much block everything else out. This could lead to a person
focusing in on anger and one having a heightened level of aggressive behavior. The final
theory that has emerged is the Pharmacological Theory. This theory attributes alcohol's
effects on aggression solely to alcohol and how it interacts with the human body. There
are other theories to sort through but, as I have found, these listed are of the more
prevalent and plausible.
The Expectancy Theory is based on the idea that it is the person consuming alcohol, not
the alcohol itself, that causes the increase in aggression. Magnified a little more, the
theory is about how a society perceives someone's actions sober and under the influence
of alcohol. In reviewing Social and Behavioral Consequences of Alcohol Consumption and
Expectancy: A Meta-Analysis (Bond, Hull 1986) it is plain to see the contradicting
research in looking at this theory. However, the article's primary focus is on how
expectancy affects deviant social behaviors by providing an excuse to engage in otherwise
inappropriate acts. The analysis took a sample of studies to examine. To be considered
the study had to be published before Sept. 1985, used that used balanced-placebo design
(used a randomized factorial design in which an alcohol-placebo beverage manipulation was
crossed with an alcohol-placebo expectancy manipulation). There ended up being thirty-six
total experiments found that fit these requirements. The results of the experiments were
combined to summarize the alcohol and expectancy effects. Dependent measures identified
were: aggression, alcohol consumption, physical sensations, mood, attentional focus,
locus of control, helping, motor performance, information processing, physiology, and
sexual arousal. In order for the expectancy theory to hold true, the belief that one is
drinking alcohol should have the same effects as alcohol consumption.
The studies analyzed yielded interesting results. Internal sensations and mood seemed to
be effected by the actual consumption of alcohol and relatively immune to the effects of
alcohol expectancy. The results found inconsistencies in the moods aroused when alcohol
was consumed and a significantly high amount of heterogeneity of expectancy effects. This
might indicate that expectancy has a more beneficial effect on mood in a humorous setting
than in neutral setting (a humorous setting is hard to replicate in a research lab which
accounts for this aspect missing in the data). The numbers show that physiological
responses were not reliably susceptible to the effects of alcohol or expectancy. A sex
difference is found, however, in the expectancy model of this aspect. Though not
statistically significant, women showed a slight increase in
aro********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************y
does not increase aggressive tendencies, it may even lower aggressive behavior in some
cases. On the flip-side of the coin, expectancy does have significant effects on sexual
arousal and alcohol consumption (loss of drinking control) while alcohol consumption does
not effect these aspects. The article concludes with the notion that both alcohol
consumption and expectancy have effects on behavior. However, it is hard to say from the
studies examined which data is comparable to other data due to the heterogeneous
experiments and results. 
This analysis was honest with its findings and pointed out the confounds in the studies
they evaluated. The researchers did not find exactly what they were looking for but they
also did not find, in the data, evidence to end the debate either. I think the large
variance in the results in the studies can be attributed to the fact that they gathered
data by means of self-report of the subjects. This leads to a wide array of problems,
especially when alcohol has been administered. Subjects can lie about what they are
feeling at the time or alcohol might make a feeling more intense causing an altered
result in the data. The researchers also eluded to the fact that it is hard to replicate
social situations in a laboratory setting, which could definitely effect how a person
responds to alcohol consumption or expectancies.
The attention based theory seems to be an extension of expectancy theory with a touch of
the pharmacological theory. It is centered on the idea that the consumption of alcohol
reduces a person's cognitive resources. This would leave a person with very little
peripheral ability, enabling one to only focus on one idea or emotion at a time. The term
alcohol myopia is also used to describe this effect. I was not able to get an actual
study on this theory. However, I did find an article that spelled out the ideas of this
theory and how they work to effect a person. The article also seemed to like the notion
of alcohol's theorized ability to lower inhibition and tries to tie the two together.
Though this is an interesting theory, it seems that it would be very difficult to
research as it depends on reliably knowing someone's mood before the consumption of
alcohol and constantly measuring mood throughout the actual consumption of alcohol. I
only know of one study done on this theory, unfortunately I was unable to locate the
journal. 
The pharmacological theory hypothesizes that aggressive behavior is directly caused by
the consumption of alcohol. Several studies can be found to support this theory. Of
these, most were a variation on a study originally done by Stuart Taylor. The basic
method in these experiments were the same. There were approximately forty subjects in
every study I examined. Subjects were selected via telephone using a revised version of
the Effects of Drinking Questionnaire (EDQ). Subjects selected were categorized into two
groups according to their responses on the EDQ; one that expected alcohol to increase
aggression (EI), and one that expected alcohol to decrease aggression (ED). These groups
were then randomly assigned to two equally sized groups of which one would receive
placebo drink and the other an alcoholic drink. The placebo contained a small amount of
alcohol to prevent participants from determining what dosage they received. The
participants would take the alcohol or placebo on an empty stomach, filled out a
questionnaire on their mood, and proceeded to play a competition game with a fictitious
other participant. The game was based on reaction time where the participants would try
to have a faster reaction time than their competitor. The loser of the game would receive
an electric shock from their opponent at a level set by their opponent. The level of
shock was based on a scale of 1 to 10 in regards to a person's unpleasantness shock
threshold. The level of shock that was selected by one's opponent could be viewed on a
screen prior to the beginning of the game (i.e. you could see what punishment you would
receive if you lost the game). As the reaction time competition takes place the shock
level the participant sets for his opponent is recorded and is the measure of aggression.
The results showed that those who consumed alcohol (both EI and ED) were significantly
more aggressive when provoked than were those who consumed the placebo. The both alcohol
groups set the initial shocks higher than the placebo, however the EI group with alcohol
responded more aggressively when their opponent started setting higher shock values (i.e.
they set higher shock values based on the shocks they were receiving) than any of the
other groups. The researchers concluded that alcohol has an effect on aggression when
someone is being provoked and that expectancy only came into play when someone is being
heavily provoked to respond aggressively, consumed a large quantity of alcohol, and
expected their aggression level to increase because of the alcohol. These results were
reproduced throughout several studies. One study, however, used the same measures with
the exception that they also added another dimension. They wanted to see the effects of
alcohol combined with the effects of alprazolam (a benzodiazepine known to increase
aggression). In fact the findings of this study showed that the level of aggression in
the alcohol/placebo, alprazolam/placebo, and placebo/placebo conditions were all roughly
the same and the only condition to show significant increase in aggressive behavior was
when the alcohol/alprazolam was consumed.
Though these studies seemed to have produced hard evidence for the pharmacological
theory, there are several confounds that make the argument fallible. First, a placebo
drink is not an adequate substitute for alcohol. Someone will know if they are actually
feeling a buzz from the drink they consume, regardless of taste. Perhaps adding an
intoxicating drug (one known not to increase or decrease aggression) dimension to the
studies may have elicited more convincing results. Also, having someone report on how
they believe alcohol effects their aggression levels is really not an effective way to
gather valid data. Aggression means different things to different people and there are
possibilities of people not being honest in trying to make themselves look more favorable
(more favorable because they are not aggressive people). Another confound to the studies
is that expectancy appears to be an American trait as the theory goes, so including a
cross-cultural aspect to the studies would further either one of these theories
immensely. The amount of participants in most of the studies was rather small (about 10
participants per group) which, the researchers admitted, left a particularly strong
possibility for individual differences to have profound effects on the research.
Increasing the amount of participants per cell could have added to the credibility of the
research. The participants were only given one way to respond in the competitions,
aggressively. The studies could have been better served if another response was available
to the participants. Even having the participants reporting on their mood during the
games could have better gauged the amount of aggression displayed.
In examining the research on the relationship between alcohol and aggressive behavior, it
is easy to see that the results often contradict themselves. Research in this area is
hard to do well because of the reliability on the self-report method and the fact that
alcohol is normally consumed in a social setting which is hard to recreate in a research
laboratory. Furthermore, it is also hard to an American that doesn't already have
hardened expectancies about the effects of alcohol that have been embedded by culture. If
this wasn't the case, self-report would be a more reliable method of separating
participants into various categories. Research in this area is far from conclusive. There
isn't really a dominant theory that stands above the other. It seems rather that the
relationship between alcohol and aggression could be a result of the combination of
expectancy and pharmacological factors.
Bibliography
Various Psychology Journal Articles