Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: The Bacchus Effect: A Mechanism to Explain Risky Choice Under Intoxication

DRMS 博士论文研究：酒神效应：解释中毒状态下危险选择的机制

• 批准号: 0851724
• 负责人: Julie Downs
• 金额: $ 2.51万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-03-01 至 2010-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0851724&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; DRMS; Bacchus

Alcohol use is associated with risky behaviors, such as reckless driving, binge eating, and unprotected sex. In addition to the negative health effects of these behaviors, such as sexually transmitted diseases and obesity, there are significant economic costs to society of such risky behavior. For example, drunk driving costs the American public over 100 billion dollars annually, including monetary costs and lost quality of life, with the majority of this cost borne by people other than the drunk driver. Beyond health and financial costs, there are also costs to emotional well-being, such as the regret, guilt or shame felt after drunken behavior. If we want to prevent or reduce these negative outcomes by targeting alcohol use, we must understand alcohol?s role in risky behavior.Conventional wisdom holds that alcohol blinds people to the risks around them, and many millions of tax dollars have been spent to create educational programs based on this premise. The scientific evidence, however, does not unambiguously support the conventional view. Some research has shown that people are no less able to understand risk information when they are drunk than when they are sober and people may even seek out or find some intrinsic value in risk when drunk. If the conventional model is wrong, then many existing curricula waste time and money, and may even risk the lives of those who believe that such strategies will help them to avoid negative situations, and thus fail to take more effective precautions. This research project tests an alternative model of the mechanism by which alcohol affects risky decisions, focusing on emotional and motivational processes involved when people consider both the risks and the benefits of different situations when they are drunk versus when they are sober. We explore several different kinds of behaviors that are commonly linked to alcohol use, including sexual behavior, food choices, and interpersonal negotiation. If our results show that alcohol leads to risky behavior by changing how much people want an attractive option, rather than affecting people?s ability to understand the risks associated with that option, then we would recommend that educational programs switch from highlighting risks to a new focus on undermining benefits.

饮酒与危险行为有关，例如鲁ck驾驶，暴饮暴食和无保护的性行为。除了这些行为的负面影响（例如性传播疾病和肥胖症）外，这种危险行为的经济成本很大。例如，酒后驾车每年使美国公众付出超过1000亿美元的费用，包括货币成本和生活质量损失，大部分这些费用由醉酒司机以外的其他人承担。除了健康和经济成本外，情感幸福还具有成本，例如醉酒行为后的遗憾，内gui或羞耻感。如果我们想通过靶向饮酒来预防或减少这些负面结果，我们必须了解酒精在危险行为中的作用。规定的智慧认为，酒精使人们对周围的风险蒙蔽，并且已经花费了数百万税款来基于这个前提来创建教育计划。但是，科学证据并没有明确支持传统观点。一些研究表明，当人们喝醉的风险信息比清醒时，人们还可以理解风险信息，而人们甚至可能会寻找或在醉酒时发现风险中的内在价值。如果传统模型是错误的，那么许多现有的课程浪费时间和金钱，甚至可能冒着那些认为这种策略将有助于他们避免负面情况的人的生命，因此未能采取更有效的预防措施。该研究项目测试了酒精会影响风险决策的机制的替代模型，当人们考虑在清醒时喝醉的风险和不同情况时的风险和好处时，重点介绍了涉及的情感和动机过程。我们探索几种通常与饮酒有关的行为，包括性行为，食物选择和人际交往。如果我们的结果表明酒精会通过改变人们想要有吸引力的选择，而不是影响人们了解与该选项相关的风险的能力来导致风险行为，那么我们建议教育计划从突出风险转变为对破坏福利的新重点。