Women’s Response Performance in Sexually Risky Situations: Associations With Disinhibited Sex-Related Alcohol Expectancies

This study evaluated the effects of sexual victimization history, alcohol-related problems, psychological distress, and disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies on the effectiveness of women’s response performance in hypothetical social situations depicting risk for sexual victimization. Two hundred and forty-five undergraduate women first listened to audiotaped descriptions of the hypothetical social situations and imagined that they were the woman depicted in each scenario. They then were given a response to each situation deemed in prior work by experts in the sexual victimization research area to be effective at reducing risk for sexual victimization and asked to provide each response verbally while being videotaped. Participants then completed measures assessing prior victimization history, alcohol-related problems, psychological distress, and disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies. Experts in the sexual violence research area rated participants’ responses with respect to how effective each response was in decreasing their risk for having an unwanted sexual experience, defined as an experience in which the woman may be verbally or physically coerced into having a sexual contact of any kind with a man. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies were associated positively with women’s response performance, indicating that women who endorsed greater disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies provided more effective responses to risky hypothetical situations. Findings suggest possible interventions aimed at reducing women’s risk of sexual victimization.

Changes in interoception after alcohol administration correlate with expectancies and subjective effects

Interoceptive signals give rise to subjective feeling states that can drive motivational and behavioral responses. In the context of alcohol use behaviors, interoceptive signals may shape subjective alcohol experiences, and thereby support bio-behavioral mechanisms of drinking behavior change. This study examined the acute effects of alcohol on participants’ interoceptive sensitivity, and determined whether pharmacologically induced changes in heart beat detection correlate with subjective alcohol effects, craving and expectancies.Participants completed a two-session, double-blind placebo controlled experiment (n=31). Participants consumed a beverage containing 0.4g/kg of alcohol or a placebo. They also completed measurements of alcohol expectancies at baseline, and alcohol-induced changes in mood, craving and light-headedness. Interoceptive sensitivity was measured using the heartbeat discrimination task prior to and following beverage administration, yielding indices of interoceptive accuracy, confidence and meta-cognition. Alcohol administration increased interoceptive accuracy compared to baseline and placebo; and those changes in interoception negatively correlated with negative alcohol expectancies. Further, changes in interoception positively correlated with perceived light-headedness and positive mood after alcohol administration, whereas null effects were found for craving. In the placebo condition, null results were obtained. Alcohol is well established to change bodily states, and here we find that the extent to which alcohol increases participants’ sensitivity to bodily states impacts their subjective drinking experiences. This was observed in relation to mood and light-headedness, but also on prospective alcohol expectancies. We posit that over successive alcohol experiences, changes in bodily states may feed into the development of alcohol expectancies that could in turn predict future drinking behaviors.