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Date Available

12-7-2011

Year of Publication

2007

Document Type

Thesis

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

Psychology

Faculty

Peter Giancola

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that acute alcohol consumption facilitates aggression through the reduction of adaptive anxiety/fear responses to danger/threat. Participants were 80 healthy male social drinkers between 21 and 33 years of age. They were randomly assigned to one of four groups: 1) Alcohol/anxiety induction (n=20), 2) Placebo/anxiety induction (n=20), 3) Alcohol only (n=20), and 4) Placebo only (n=20). Anxiety was induced by informing participants that they had to deliver a speech about what they liked and disliked about their body in front of a video camera. A modified version of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (Taylor, 1967) was used to measure aggressive behavior in a situation where electric shocks were administered to, and received from, a fictitious opponent during a supposed competitive reaction-time task. Results indicated that the anxiety induction was successful in reducing aggression for participants who received alcohol. Results are discussed within the context of a number of theories specifying anxiety as a possible mediator of the alcohol aggression relation.

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