Building toward an Intervention for Alcohol-Related Aggression: A Cognitive and Behavior Test of the Attention Allocation Model

• Main Author: Gallagher, Kathryn Elise
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University 2010
• Subjects: Alcohol consumption; Alcohol myopia theory; Attention-allocation model; Physical aggression
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/psych_theses/74; http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1075&context=psych_theses

This study provided the first direct test of the cognitive underpinnings of the attention-allocation model and attempted to replicate and extend past behavioral findings for this model as an explanation for alcohol-related aggression. Men were randomly assigned to a beverage (Alcohol, No-Alcohol Control) and a distraction (Moderate Distraction, No Distraction) condition. All men were provoked by a male confederate and completed a dot probe task and a laboratory aggression task without distraction or while presented with a moderate distraction task. Results indicated that intoxicated men whose attention was distracted displayed significantly lower levels of aggression bias and enacted significantly less physical aggression than intoxicated men whose attention was not distracted. However, aggression bias did not account for the lower levels of alcohol-related aggression in the distraction, relative to the no-distraction, condition. Discussion focused on how these data inform intervention programming for alcohol-related aggression.