Preprint: Initial evidence that imagined intoxication dampens forecasted anxiety more for uncertain than for certain social situations

As alcohol use continues to be a leading contributor of death and disability, the need to better understand motivations for drinking remains critical. Influential Stress Response Dampening (SRD) and related theories suggest alcohol is negatively reinforcing due to its ability to lower the magnitude of responses to stressors. SRD effects, however, remain inconsistently observed in the laboratory despite over three decades of research. Building on animal models, a translational program of research suggests alcohol reliably and robustly produces more SRD during the presentation of uncertain relative to certain stressors, but the generalizability of this research remains unclear. In this brief communication, we test if previous research on alcohol SRD and stressor certainty generalizes beyond the acute effects of a dose of alcohol on reactions to uncommonly encountered laboratory stressors to imagined real-life scenarios. We use a novel experimental affective forecasting task to gauge drinkers’ expectations about alcohol and anxiety in relatively uncertain and certain social situations. Participants reported expecting a greater dampening effect of alcohol on their anxiety when imagining being in a social situation with relatively uncertain compared to relatively certain stressors. We discuss this result in terms of the broader alcohol SRD literature and review its implications for potential future directions in alcohol SRD research, as well as potential for the treatment of disordered alcohol use.