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Using Demand Curves to Quantify the Reinforcing Value of Social and Solitary Drinking.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Young adults typically drink in social settings and report high levels of episodic heavy drinking despite a range of adverse consequences. Behavioral economics posits that this may reflect a reinforcer pathology in which alcohol is overvalued relative to other reinforcers. Theoretically, the value of alcohol is related to both the direct pharmacological effects of alcohol (euphoria, sedation) and the associated social reinforcement, but to date no studies have differentiated the value of social vs. solitary drinking. The current study examines two modified hypothetical alcohol purchase tasks (APTs), one explicitly social and one explicitly solitary, in order to quantify the reward value of social vs. solitary drinking and to determine whether there are unique clinical correlates of solitary alcohol demand. METHODS:Participants were young adults (N = 274, Mage = 25.15, SD = 4.10) recruited from Mturk and from a university subject pool. Participants completed a solitary and social APT, in addition to measures of alcohol consumption and problems. RESULTS:Participants reported significantly greater demand in the social APT compared to the solitary APT across all demand indices. Elevated solitary and social demand were associated with elevated levels of alcohol use and problems. Using a residualized change approach, solitary demand amplitude (maximum consumption and expenditure) and persistence (price sensitivity) contributed additional variance above and beyond their social APT composite counterparts in predicting typical drinks per week and the self-care, academic/occupational, and physical dependence subscales of the YAACQ. CONCLUSIONS:The presence of peers increases alcohol demand compared to a solitary scenario, and greater relative solitary drinking demand may be a risk factor for greater alcohol consumption and problems.

SUBMITTER: Acuff SF

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7572865 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:IntroductionPrevious studies have highlighted a strong bidirectional relationship between cigarette and alcohol consumption. To advance our understanding of this relationship the present study uses a behavioral economic approach in a community sample (N = 383) of nontreatment seeking heavy drinking smokers.Aims and methodsThe aims were to examine same-substance and cross-substance relationships between alcohol and cigarette use, and latent factors of demand. A community sample of nontreatment seeking heavy drinking smokers completed an in-person assessment battery including measures of alcohol and tobacco use as well as the Cigarette Purchase Task and the Alcohol Purchase Task. Latent factors of demand were derived from these hypothetical purchase tasks.ResultsResults revealed a positive correlation between paired alcohol and cigarette demand indices (eg, correlation between alcohol intensity and cigarette intensity) (rs = 0.18-0.46, p ≤ .003). Over and above alcohol factors, cigarette use variables (eg, Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence and cigarettes per smoking day) significantly predicted an additional 4.5% (p < .01) of the variance in Persistence values but not Amplitude values for alcohol. Over and above cigarette factors, alcohol use variables predicted cigarette Persistence values (ΔR2 = .013, p = .05), however, did not predict Amplitude values.ConclusionsThese results advance our understanding of the overlap between cigarette and alcohol by demonstrating that involvement with one substance was associated with demand for the other substance. This asymmetric profile-from smoking to alcohol demand, but not vice versa-suggests that it is not simply tapping into a generally higher reward sensitivity and warrants further investigation.ImplicationsTo our knowledge, no study to date has examined alcohol and cigarette demand, via hypothetical purchase tasks, in a clinical sample of heavy drinking smokers. This study demonstrates that behavioral economic indices may be sensitive to cross-substance relationships and specifically that such relationships are asymmetrically stronger for smoking variables affecting alcohol demand, not the other way around.

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Using Demand Curves to Quantify the Reinforcing Value of Social and Solitary Drinking.

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