Predictors of injurious assault committed during or after drinking alcohol: a case-control study of young offenders

Pervasive, hard-wired and male: Qualitative study of how UK adolescents view alcohol-related aggression

Laboratory studies of alcohol-inexperienced adolescents show that aggression can be primed by alcohol-related stimuli, suggesting that alcohol-related aggression is partly socially learned. Script theory proposes that alcohol-related aggression 'scripts' for social behaviors are culturally-available and learned by individuals. The purpose of the study was to understand the content and origins of alcohol-related aggression scripts learned by adolescents. This qualitative focus group study of 40 adolescents (ages 14-16 years) examined alcohol-related aggression scripts. Participants believed aggression and severe injury to be pervasive when young people drink. Viewed through a biological lens, participants described aggression as an 'instinctive' and 'hard-wired' male trait facilitated by intoxication. As such, alcohol-related aggression was not seen as intended or personally controllable and participants did not see it in moral terms. Females were largely viewed as either bystanders of inter-male aggression or potential victims of male sexual aggression. Participants attributed their views on the frequency and nature of alcohol-related aggression to current affairs and reality television, which they felt portrayed a reality of which they had little experience. The origins of the explicitly biological frameworks that participants used seemed to lie in pre-existing beliefs about the nature of gender differences. Perceptions of the pervasiveness of male alcohol-related aggression, and the consequent failure to view alcohol-related aggression in moral terms, could dispose some young people to alcohol-related aggression. Interventions could target (1) the beliefs that alcohol-related aggression is pervasive and uncontrollable in males, and (2) participants' dysfunctional views of masculinity that underpin those beliefs.

Implicit alcohol-aggression scripts and alcohol-related aggression on a laboratory task in 11- to 14-year-old adolescents

Social scripts are commonly shared representations of behavior in social contexts, which are seen to be partly transmitted through social and cultural media. Research suggests that people hold scripts associated with alcohol-related aggression, but, unlike general aggression scripts, there is little evidence of social transmission. To demonstrate social transmission of alcohol-related aggression scripts, learning mechanisms based on personal experience should be minimized. We used a lexical decision task to examine implicit links between alcohol and aggression in alcohol-naïve adolescents who have limited personal or vicarious experience of alcohol-related aggression. One hundred and four 11-14 year old adolescents made lexical decisions on aggressive or nonaggressive words preceded by 40-ms alcohol or nonalcohol word primes. Repeated measures analyses of group data showed that alcohol word primes did not lead to faster responses to aggressive words than to nonaggressive words, nor were responses to aggressive words faster when they were preceded by alcohol word primes than by nonalcohol word primes. However, at an individual level, faster recognition times to the alcohol prime/aggression target word combination predicted aggression on a competitive laboratory task in 14 year olds only. This occurred only when the competitive aggression task was preceded by a visual presentation of alcoholic, but not nonalcoholic beverage, images. We concluded that alcohol-related aggression scripts are not strongly developed in this age group, but individual differences in script strength are linked to alcohol-related laboratory aggression.