Alcohol and social anxiety in males: Behavioral, cognitive, and physiological effects.

Abstract

As a test of the tension reduction hypothesis (TRH) of alcohol consumption, two studies were conducted to determine the effects of alcohol on heterosexual social anxiety. In Study 1 a clinical population of socially anxious males first drank .0 or .5 ml of pure ethanol/kg of body weight and then interacted with a female confederate. Expectancies about alcohol consumption and its effects were manipulated by using both a placebo beverage and instructional sets about the positive or negative effects of alcohol. Physiological, cognitive/selfreport, and behavioral measures indicated that alcohol produced a marked impairment in the shy subjects on a number of behavioral and self-report measures while not appreciably affecting physiological responses. Study 2 employed a sample of undergraduate males and three dosages of alcohol (.0, ,33, and .75 ml/kg). Once again alcohol impaired both behavioral performance and self-report ratings. In addition, the high-dosage alcohol group experienced greater sustained cardiac acceleration as a function of the social interaction than did the other two groups, suggesting the possibility of an alcohol-stress functional relationship. Taken collectively, this sequence of studies disconfirms the utility of a global TRH in explaining the psychological and physiological effects of alcohol ingestion.

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