Alcohol, drinking patterns, and the psychological probability of success

This study compared the effects of alcohol on estimates of success given by alcoholics and nonalcoholics. Theoretically, alcoholism has been associated with a learned ambivalence toward the consumption of alcohol. It follows that alcoholics are likely to judge that alcohol will have a conflicted (both favorable and unfavorable) effect on their estimates of success in the performance of skill and chance tasks. The alcoholic and nonalcoholic subjects were asked to estimate their degree of success under conditions in which they considered themselves very lucky, lucky, neither lucky nor unlucky but realistic, unlucky, and, very unlucky. Conflict after drinking was assumed to be present when subjects judged themselves relatively successful at the lucky end of the continuum (representing the favorable effects of alcohol) and relatively unsuccessful at the unlucky end of the continuum (representing the unfavorable effects of alcohol). Thirty nonpsychotic hospitalized alcoholics, thirty hospital employees who drank socially, and thirty hospitalized chronic schizophrenics who reported a history of moderate but not social drinking behavior, were employed in the study. Ten of the thirty subjects in each comparison group were randomly assigned to a nondrinking control group condition, were told that they would not be getting a drink of whiskey, and were then asked to give their psychological probability estimates. Ten more subjects from each of the three comparison groups were randomly assigned to a no-delay drinking condition in which they drank their drink of whiskey and immediately practiced the skill and chance tasks, and then gave their psychological probability estimates. The last ten subjects were assigned to a delay condition in which they drank their whiskey, performed some tasks not relevant to the present study, and then gave their psychological probability estimates. The three conditions respectively manipulated the psychological consequences of being denied a drink, the primarily psychological consequences of having just had a drink, and the interacting psychological and physiological consequences of having had a drink one-half hour before. The data were analyzed in a five-way analysis of variance independent on two dimensions and correlated on three. The results of this analysis, and of an orthogonal polynomial analysis of linear trend, tended to support the hypothesis. The alcoholics were most conflicted when they had just had a drink, and were least conflicted when they had been denied a drink. The normals were most conflicted at having been denied a drink and least conflicted following a drink consumed one-half hour before. The schizophrenics were most conflicted about the drink consumed one-half hour before giving their judgments and were least conflicted about the drink that they had just consumed. The responses of the schizophrenics, who were controlled but nonsocial drinkers, suggest limitations to social learning theories of drinking behavior. Parallels between psychological probability measures and projective tests were discussed. Trend analysis and interaction means were found to be useful in the evaluation of some higher-order interactions.