Alcohol Affects Goal Commitment by Explicitly and Implicitly Induced Myopia

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Authors

Alcohol commits people to personally important goals even if expectations of reaching the goals are low. To illuminate this effect, we used alcohol myopia theory, stating that alcohol intoxicated people disproportionally attend to the most salient aspects of a situation and ignore peripheral aspects. When low expectations of reaching an important goal were activated students who consumed alcohol were less committed than students who consumed a placebo. We observed less commitment regardless of whether low expectations were explicitly activated in a questionnaire (Study 1) or implicitly activated through subliminal priming (Study 2). The results imply that, intoxicated people commit to goals according to what aspects of a goal are activated either explicitly or implicitly.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Abnormal Psychology
Volume121
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)524-529
Number of pages6
ISSN0021-843X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.05.2012
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Alcohol myopia, Expectations, Goal commitment, Subliminal priming
  • Psychology

DOI