Behavioral economics and the aggregate versus proximal impact of sociality on heavy drinking

Effects of social drinking context on subjective effects, affect, and next-day appraisals in the natural environment

BACKGROUND

Drinking commonly occurs in social settings and may bolster social reinforcement. Laboratory studies suggest that subjective effects and mood are mechanisms through which the social context influences alcohol consumption. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) may be useful for extending these findings to the natural environment. This pre-registered secondary analysis of EMA data investigated the influence of the social environment on: (1) stimulating and sedating subjective effects of alcohol, (2) contentedness and negative affect, and (3) next-day evaluations of the drinking occasion.

METHODS

Nontreatment seeking adults reporting past-month heavy drinking (N = 131; Mage = 28.09; 42% female) completed 7 days of EMA (in the morning, at random, and following drinking prompts), which included questions on their social context (drinking in the presence of known others or alone), contemporaneous stimulating and sedating effects, contentedness and negative affect, alcohol consumption, and next-day evaluations of a prior day's drinking event (how satisfying/pleasant was drinking). We used multi-level models in SAS 9.4 M7 software to examine relations among the variables.

RESULTS

Contemporaneous subjective effects (stimulating or sedating), negative affect, and contentedness did not significantly depend on the social context. For next-day evaluations of pleasure/satisfaction from drinking, context effects were dependent on consumption totals. As the total number of standard drinks consumed increased, recollections of pleasure/satisfaction were higher when drinking had occurred with others, relative to alone. At lower consumption totals, next-day evaluations did not appear to depend on social context.

CONCLUSIONS

When reported contemporaneously, subjective effects and affect do not appear dependent upon the presence of known others. However, heavier drinking events, relative to lighter drinking events, are appraised more favorably the following day when occurring within social contexts.

An experimental investigation into the effect of negative affect on the behavioral economic demand for alcohol

Influential theoretical models hypothesize that alcohol use is an especially potent reinforcer when used as a strategy to cope with negative affect. Although the evidence for this idea in observational data is weak, some experimental evidence suggests that the behavioral economic demand for alcohol increases immediately following a negative emotional event. Because existing studies testing the effect of negative mood inductions on the demand for alcohol have several methodological limitations and do not take inter- and intraindividual variability into account, we developed an improved experimental design to increase our confidence in any potential within-person effect of negative mood inductions on alcohol demand as well as to test whether this effect exhibits systematic inter- and intraindividual variability. We hypothesize that people will show a higher demand for alcohol following negative compared to neutral mood inductions and that this effect is stronger in heavy compared to light drinkers as well as stronger on days characterized by higher coping motives and negative urgency. Three hundred twenty college students will complete the alcohol purchase task (APT) after being subjected to 100 mood inductions (six negative, six neutral) on 20 separate days. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Alcohol cues increase behavioral economic demand and craving for alcohol in nontreatment-seeking and treatment-seeking heavy drinkers

BACKGROUND

Behavioral economic research has revealed significant increases in alcohol demand following exposure to alcohol-related cues. Prior research has focused exclusively on nontreatment-seeking heavy drinkers, included only male participants, or used heterogeneous methods. The current studies sought to replicate and extend existing findings in treatment-seeking and nontreatment-seeking heavy drinkers while also examining sex effects and moderation by alcohol use disorder (AUD) severity.

METHODS

Study 1 included 117 nontreatment-seeking heavy drinkers (51.5% women; M age 34.69; 56.4% AUD+), and Study 2 included 89 treatment-seeking heavy drinkers with AUD (40.4% women; M age = 41.35). In both studies, alcohol demand was measured using a hypothetical alcohol purchase task (APT), and subjective alcohol craving was measured using visual analog scales. Measures were collected following exposure to neutral (water) cues in a standard room and alcohol cues in a bar lab.

RESULTS

Alcohol demand (intensity, Omax , breakpoint, and elasticity) and craving were significantly increased following alcohol cues compared to neutral cues (ps < 0.005) with effect sizes ranging from small to large (ηp 2  = 0.074-0.480). Participants with AUD (Study 1) or with higher AUD severity (Study 2) reported higher craving and higher demand for most indices (i.e., main effects; ps < 0.032, ηp 2  = 0.043-0.239). A larger alcohol cue increase in Omax was found for AUD+ participants in Study 1 compared to non-AUD participants (p = 0.028, ηp 2  = 0.041) but not for any other indices in Study 1 or Study 2. There were no significant sex effects.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings replicate and extend prior research by offering additional insight into alcohol cue effects on the reinforcing value of alcohol and subjective motivation to drink. The results also suggest that sex and AUD severity do not meaningfully impact cue effects across most indices of demand.

Role of social context in addiction etiology and recovery

While social context has long been considered central to substance use disorder prevention and treatment and many drug-taking events occur in social settings, experimental research on social context has historically been limited. Recent years have seen an emergence of concerted preclinical and human laboratory research documenting the direct impact of social context on substance use, delineating behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms underlying social influence's role. We review this emerging preclinical and human laboratory literature from a theoretical lens that considers distinct stages of the addiction process including drug initiation/acquisition, escalation, and recovery. A key conclusion of existing research is that the impact of the social environment is critically moderated by the drug-taking behavior and drug use history of a social peer. Specifically, while drug-free social contexts can reduce the likelihood of drug use initiation and act as a competitive non-drug alternative preventing escalation, drug-using peers can equally facilitate initiation and escalation through peer modeling as a contingent reward of use. Likewise, social context may facilitate recovery or serve as a barrier that increases the chances of a return to regular use. We conclude by discussing evidence-based treatments and recovery support services that explicitly target social mechanisms or that have identified social context as a mechanism of change within treatment. Ultimately, new areas for research including the expansion of drug classes studied and novel human laboratory designs are needed to further translate emerging findings into clinical practice.

The event-based influence of incentivizing and physical contexts on daily alcohol initiation and consumption

BACKGROUND

Young adults often decide to engage in heavy drinking. Learning more about the real-time factors that predict decisions to initiate a drinking episode and how much is consumed in any single drinking episode is necessary in developing our understanding of momentary alcohol use and discrete decisions surrounding alcohol use.

METHODS

The current study examined the association between contextual factors and decisions to initiate and consume alcohol in 104 young adult individuals over 2 weeks via mobile daily diary. Participants responded to daily notifications about decisions to drink or not and the contextual factors surrounding each event. The contextual factors included the situation (e.g., bar setting and pregaming) and incentives (e.g., alcohol, social, and mood enhancement).

RESULTS

Multilevel analyses revealed that incentives predicted both the initiation of drinking and the amount consumed. Event-based alcohol and mood incentives predicted the initiation of drinking, while alcohol, mood, and social/party incentives predicted how much was consumed at a specific event. However, context had a more complex association with drinking outcomes. Being in a bar, alone, or at a residence predicted decisions to initiate drinking, while being in a bar, pregaming situation, or other party situation with others who are drinking predicted how much a person drank.

CONCLUSIONS

The results highlight the importance of studying event-specific predictors of drinking decisions and the complex association between context/location and the type of drinking decision or outcome.

Alcohol demand assessed daily as a predictor of same day drinking

OBJECTIVE

In this investigation, baseline (trait) and daily (brief) alcohol purchase task (APT) indices (intensity: consumption at zero cost; Omax: maximum expenditure; breakpoint: cost suppressing consumption to zero) were used to investigate the influence of morning demand on subsequent alcohol consumption.

METHOD

Heavy drinking college students (n = 92, age 18-20, 50% female) completed 28 daily morning reports including demand and prior day drinking. Hierarchical linear modeling, with days (Level 1) nested within-person (Level 2) were used to test the effect of morning demand on number of drinks consumed on planned drinking days, with Level 1 (study day, survey time, weekend/weekday) and Level 2 (spending money, typical drinks) covariates. Subsequently, the relative impact on daily drinking of (a) the average of each daily demand index on planned drinking days versus (b) the matched trait demand index was assessed.

RESULTS

Higher morning intensity was related to increased alcohol consumption later that night. This finding held in sensitivity analyses wherein demand was assumed to be zero on unplanned drinking days. When tested individually, both aggregate daily and baseline trait intensity were significantly associated with average drinks measured daily. However, in the same model, only aggregate daily intensity was significant. Neither daily aggregate nor trait breakpoint or Omax were significant.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings replicate previous work suggesting that brief demand (intensity) can predict same day drinking. Elevation in intensity in particular may denote greater risk for elevated alcohol consumption at subsequent episodes, thus intervention among at-risk drinkers may be possible prior to drinking initiation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of social context and opportunity cost on the behavioral economic value of cannabis

OBJECTIVE

Behavioral economics suggest that cannabis reinforcing value (cannabis demand) may be influenced by external, contextual factors such as the social reward that might accompany cannabis use and the presence of opportunity costs (e.g., a next-day responsibility that cannabis use might adversely impact). The present study examined the effect of social context and opportunity cost on cannabis demand and explored whether relations were moderated by cannabis use severity.

METHOD

Adults with past-week cannabis use recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 310; 53.5% female, 79.4% White) completed four purchase tasks, in which participants reported how much cannabis they would purchase across escalating prices, to index cannabis demand under varying contexts: (a) solitary, typical responsibilities; (b) social, typical responsibilities; (c) solitary, substantial responsibilities; and (d) social, substantial responsibilities.

RESULTS

The presence of peers significantly increased demand intensity (consumption at zero price) and Omax (maximum expenditure) relative to the solitary conditions. Substantial responsibilities significantly decreased intensity, breakpoint (price at which consumption is fully suppressed), and Pmax (price at which maximum expenditure occurs) and increased elasticity (greater price sensitivity). Demand was most inelastic in the social, typical responsibilities condition relative to other conditions. Cannabis use severity was associated with less elastic demand in the solitary, typical responsibilities condition. Those with higher cannabis use severity reported larger differences in demand intensity and Omax between solitary and social conditions, and in demand elasticity between typical and substantial responsibility conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

Results are consistent with previous research illustrating social and opportunity costs as determinants of cannabis use behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Applying Mixed-Effects Modeling to Behavioral Economic Demand: An Introduction

Behavioral economic demand methodology is increasingly being used in various fields such as substance use and consumer behavior analysis. Traditional analytical techniques to fitting demand data have proven useful yet some of these approaches require preprocessing of data, ignore dependence in the data, and present statistical limitations. We term these approaches "fit to group" and "two stage" with the former interested in group or population level estimates and the latter interested in individual subject estimates. As an extension to these regression techniques, mixed-effect (or multilevel) modeling can serve as an improvement over these traditional methods. Notable benefits include providing simultaneous group (i.e., population) level estimates (with more accurate standard errors) and individual level predictions while accommodating the inclusion of "nonsystematic" response sets and covariates. These models can also accommodate complex experimental designs including repeated measures. The goal of this article is to introduce and provide a high-level overview of mixed-effects modeling techniques applied to behavioral economic demand data. We compare and contrast results from traditional techniques to that of the mixed-effects models across two datasets differing in species and experimental design. We discuss the relative benefits and drawbacks of these approaches and provide access to statistical code and data to support the analytical replicability of the comparisons.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40614-021-00299-7.