TY - JOUR

T1 - Alcohol intake leads people to focus on desirability rather than feasibility

AU - Sevincer, A. Timur

AU - Oettingen, Gabriele

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgments Preparation of this article was supported by German Science Foundation grant OE 237/9-1 awarded to the second author. Birger Bosy’s and Maria Kowalski’s help with collecting the data and Gerlinde Luca’s help with coding the data are gratefully acknowledged.

PY - 2013/3/1

Y1 - 2013/3/1

N2 - According to alcohol myopia theory (Steele and Josephs in Am Psychol 45:921-933, 1990) intoxicated people disproportionally focus on the most salient aspects of a situation and ignore peripheral information. We investigated whether consuming alcohol leads people to disproportionally focus on the desirability rather than feasibility of important personal goals. Students named an important personal goal and then either consumed alcohol or a placebo. Thereafter, we asked them to freely think about their goal and to write down their thoughts and images. We content-analyzed students' elaborations with regard to what extent they focused on the goal's desirability and on its feasibility. Intoxicated students wrote more about aspects of desirability and less about aspects of feasibility than those who consumed a placebo. The results suggest that this effect is one mechanism by which alcohol intake leads people to feel committed to personal goals despite low feasibility of attaining these goals (Sevincer and Oettingen in J Abnorm Psychol 118:623-633, 2009).

AB - According to alcohol myopia theory (Steele and Josephs in Am Psychol 45:921-933, 1990) intoxicated people disproportionally focus on the most salient aspects of a situation and ignore peripheral information. We investigated whether consuming alcohol leads people to disproportionally focus on the desirability rather than feasibility of important personal goals. Students named an important personal goal and then either consumed alcohol or a placebo. Thereafter, we asked them to freely think about their goal and to write down their thoughts and images. We content-analyzed students' elaborations with regard to what extent they focused on the goal's desirability and on its feasibility. Intoxicated students wrote more about aspects of desirability and less about aspects of feasibility than those who consumed a placebo. The results suggest that this effect is one mechanism by which alcohol intake leads people to feel committed to personal goals despite low feasibility of attaining these goals (Sevincer and Oettingen in J Abnorm Psychol 118:623-633, 2009).

KW - Alcohol

KW - Content analysis

KW - Desirability

KW - Expectations

KW - Feasibility

KW - Goal commitment

KW - Incentive value

KW - Psychology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84874292736&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/da517077-0d18-342d-81cc-cba0ef333ac5/

U2 - 10.1007/s11031-012-9285-6

DO - 10.1007/s11031-012-9285-6

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:84874292736

VL - 37

SP - 165

EP - 176

JO - Motivation and Emotion

JF - Motivation and Emotion

SN - 0146-7239

IS - 1

ER -