Drinking motives and attentional bias to affective stimuli in problem and non-problem drinkers

Abstract

Problem drinking may reflect a maladaptive means of coping with negative emotions or enhancing positive emotions. Disorders with affective symptoms are often characterized by attentional biases for symptom-congruent emotionally valenced stimuli. Regarding addictions, coping motivated (CM) problem gamblers exhibit an attentional bias for negative stimuli, whereas enhancement motivated (EM) problem gamblers exhibit this bias for positive stimuli (Hudson, Jacques, & Stewart, 2013). We predicted that problem drinkers would show similar motive-congruent attentional biases. Problem and non-problem drinkers (n = 48 per group) completed an emotional orienting task measuring attentional biases to positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. As predicted, EM problem drinkers showed an attentional bias for positive information (i.e., reduced accuracy for positively cued trials). However, CM problem drinkers displayed a general distractibility (i.e., reduced accuracy, regardless of cue valence). The results add further support for Cooper et al.'s (1992) motivational model of alcohol use, and indicate potential motivation-matched intervention targets. (PsycINFO Database Record