In adults, alcohol-related stimuli prime aggressive responding without ingestion or belief of ingestion. This represents either experiential or socially-and culturally-mediated learning. Using a laboratory-based competitive aggression paradigm, we replicated adult findings in 103 11-14year old adolescents below the legal UK drinking age. Using a two-independent group design, priming with alcohol-related imagery led participants to deliver louder noise punishments in a competition task than priming with beverage-related images. This effect was stronger in participants scoring low on an internalization measure. Priming effects in relatively alcohol-naïve participants could constitute evidence of socio-cultural transmission of scripts linking alcohol use and aggression. The enhanced effect in lower internalization scorers suggests that alcohol priming might undermine behavioral inhibition processes in otherwise stable adolescents.
Language: en
", language="en", issn="0306-4603", doi="10.1016/j.addbeh.2010.03.013", url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2010.03.013" }