Tag: dangerous drinking

People with Severe Alcohol Use Disorder Have Impaired Ability to Learn From Others’ Painful Experiences, Raising Their Risk for Ongoing Dangerous Drinking, Study Suggests

sarah JonasResearch Results

People with alcohol use disorder (AUD) are less able to learn from others’ negative experiences, potentially rendering them more vulnerable to maintaining their dangerous drinking or relapsing, according to the first study of its type. The study explored social cognition, processes that enable us to understand and interact with others, and specifically social learning, our ability to learn by observing others’ experiences.

Among Young People, Being Around Peers May Elicit Greater Drinking Cravings than the Presence of Alcohol

sarah JonasResearch Results

The presence of peers is a key prompt for alcohol cravings among young people, according to a new study in Alcohol: Clinical & Experimental Research. When certain settings, people, or items—a bar, a friend, a glass—are paired with alcohol, they can become conditioned cues, eliciting drinking cravings. These learned reactions are associated with alcohol use disorder (AUD), treatment outcomes, and relapse. Adolescents and emerging adults are particularly susceptible to peer influence. In real-world settings, studies have found that the presence of peers predicts young people’s intensifying drinking cravings at the moment. In laboratory studies, however, peer influence is largely absent, potentially limiting the usefulness of their findings. Better understanding peers as alcohol cues could inform more effective AUD prevention and treatment programs. For the current study, researchers from Brown University, RI, evaluated alcohol cravings among youth in the human laboratory, using drinking-