Does Drinking Reduce Stress?

Alcohol's Effects on Stress Responding, Part 2
by National Institute of Health

(Page 3 of 4)

Personality Traits. Since the early 1980s, researchers have associated certain personality traits that are considered indicative of an elevated risk of alcoholism with an enhanced SRD response to alcohol. For example, Sher and Levenson found that people who experienced difficulty in controlling their behavior (who scored high on measures of behavioral undercontrol) experienced increased SRD effects. This and other observations suggest that people with such personality characteristics might be more susceptible to alcohol's reinforcing effects, including SRD. This increased susceptibility, in turn, could facilitate the development of alcoholism.

Extent of Self-Consciousness. Hull proposed that people who are highly self-conscious are most likely to experience alcohol's SRD effects. According to this self-awareness model, self-conscious people constantly evaluate their own performance and may experience stress if the result of that self-evaluation is negative. Alcohol consumption impairs the drinker's ability to encode information from the environment with respect to its relevance to the self. Consequently, both the drinker's self-awareness and the associated stress decline. The stress reduction has a reinforcing effect, thereby increasing the probability of further drinking. Some studies have supported this hypothesis by demonstrating that highly selfconscious people are more sensitive to alcohol's SRD effects. Other studies, however, have produced conflicting results.

Cognitive Functioning. A person's cognitive functioning also may influence the extent of his or her SRD response to alcohol. Alcohol has been shown to disrupt the processing of new information in the brain (cognitive processing). Consequently, alcohol may be particularly disruptive to people with cognitive deficits. To assess the relationship between cognitive functioning and alcohol's SRD effects, Peterson and colleagues administered a battery of neuropsychological tests to a group of drinkers to assess their cognitive functioning. The study participants then received a drink before being exposed to a laboratory stressor (a series of mild electric shocks). The researchers found that the participants with the lowest cognitive performance (with the greatest difficulty organizing new information) exhibited the greatest SRD response to alcohol. Other investigators also found a similar relationship between cognitive performance, alcohol consumption, and SRD response in a study using a test of "minimal brain dysfunction".

Gender. Most studies conducted in the alcohol field, including those that have analyzed the relationship between alcohol consumption and stress, have involved only male participants. Only recently have studies been conducted that have included both male and female participants. Early studies of alcohol's effects on stress that involved both genders indicated that alcohol's SRD effect differed between men and women. Subsequently, however, the findings of the largest studies that included participants of both genders suggested that alcohol's effects on stress seem to be comparable for men and women. Thus, even in studies in which women appeared to be more responsive than men to a stressor when the participants were sober, alcohol consumption did not alter this gender difference (the women were still more responsive to the stressor), suggesting that the extent of alcohol's SRD effects was similar in both men and women. It is possible, however, that the presence or absence of gender differences depends on the measures used to determine the stress response. In the studies that detected no gender differences, researchers assessed the stress response using only physiological (heart rate) and self-report measures. Consequently, other types of measures of emotional response (analysis of facial expressions associated with emotions) might reveal gender differences in the SRD response to alcohol.

Situational Factors

Although numerous influences specific to each drinker affect the extent to which he or she experiences alcohol's SRD effects, the characteristics of the situation in which drinking occurs also modify the drinker's response to alcohol. Thus, the same person experiences alcohol's effects differently when drinking at a party with friends than when consuming a drink alone at a bar after a stressful day at work. Two such situational factors that have been shown to affect alcohol's SRD effects are distraction and the timing of drinking and stress.

Distraction. In an attempt to determine the reasons underlying alcohol's variable effect on stress, Steele and Josephs proposed that alcohol reduces stress only when drinking occurs in the presence of stimuli that distract the drinker from his or her distress. According to this attention-allocation model, alcohol impairs cognitive processing. Consequently, the drinker can perceive and focus on only the most immediate cues and a situation's most relevant (salient) features. Accordingly, the concurrent activity in which a person engages while consuming alcohol helps determine alcohol's effects. For example, according to the attention-allocation model, drinking in a stressful situation (after a bad day at work) in the presence of a concurrent pleasant distraction (at a party with friends) leads to an SRD response, because the drinker perceives only the pleasantly distracting aspect of the situation and cannot focus on the stressor. Conversely, drinking without a concurrent neutral or pleasantly distracting activity (alone in a bar) does not produce an SRD effect and may even increase stress, because the drinker's attention focuses on the then-salient stressor.

Several studies have confirmed the hypothesis of the attention-allocation model. In those studies, alcohol consistently induced an SRD response when drinking occurred in combination with a pleasant distraction during a stressful laboratory task. Without such a distraction, however, drinking no longer reduced - and sometimes even intensified - stress. Because most people drink in situations that include distractions, the attention-allocation model suggests that alcohol often will produce SRD effects. Some laboratory studies, however, have produced conflicting results, demonstrating an alcoholinduced stress reduction even in the absence of a distraction. Nevertheless, the attention-allocation model provides a plausible explanation for both the stress-reducing and stressenhancing effects of drinking.

Timing of Drinking and Stress. A second situational factor that may affect alcohol's SRD effects is the time when drinking occurs relative to the stressful experience. Studies have demonstrated that alcohol's SRD effect will more likely occur when a person consumes alcohol before learning of a stressor rather than after learning of a stressor. To explain these observations, Sayette proposed the appraisal-disruption model. According to that model, intoxication impairs the cognitive processes associated with the appraisal of new information. Specifically, drinking may interfere with the initial perception of stressful information by preventing the activation of associated stressful memories and concepts.

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