• Energy Research

Objective: Implicit and explicit drinking self-identity appear to be useful in predicting alcohol-related outcomes. However, there are several different implicit and explicit measures which can be used to assess drinking self-identity. Some of these implicit measures can also capture relational information (e.g., I am a drinker, I should be a drinker), which might provide unique advantages. Despite the importance of having good measures of drinking self-identity, to date there has been little direct comparison of these measures. Method: This study (N = 358) systematically compared two commonly used measures of drinking self-identity (one implicit and one explicit: the Implicit Association Test [IAT] and the Alcohol Self-Concept Scale [ASCS]) with three relational measures of implicit self-identity (the autobiographical IAT [aIAT], the Relational Responding Task [RRT], and the Propositional Concealed Information Test [pCIT]) on a range of criteria relevant to experimental and clinical alcohol researchers. Results: Overall, we found mixed performances on the implicit measures. Interestingly, the aIAT, which probed should-based drinking identity, performed better than the standard IAT. However, the explicit measure exhibited superior performance to all other measures across all criteria. Conclusions: Our results suggest that researchers who wish to assess drinking-related self-identity and to predict alcohol-related outcomes cross-sectionally should set their focus primarily on the use (and further development) of the ASCS, rather than any of the implicit measures. Future research focusing on the ASCS should seek to investigate the generalizability of our findings to patient populations, and incorporate relational information within that procedure to further improve upon its already-strong utility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

AbstractBackground and AimsABC‐training is a new intervention to encourage health behavior change that targets the automatic activation of adaptive beliefs (i.e. automatic inferences). The aim of this proof‐of‐principle study was to test the effectiveness of web‐based ABC‐training to change outcome expectancies of alcohol drinking in a sample of hazardous drinkers.DesignOne exploratory and one confirmatory experiment with two between‐subject conditions (online ABC‐ and control‐training) and assessments at baseline and 1 week later (after three sessions of training).SettingParticipants recruited on Prolific Academic completed the web‐based study.ParticipantsAdults with self‐reported hazardous alcohol drinking (Experiment 1: 193 adults, United Kingdom, age mean = 46.7 years; Experiment 2: 282 adults, different nationalities, age mean = 38.3 years).Intervention and ComparatorABC‐training involved completing an online task that required choosing personally relevant alternative behaviors to drinking alcohol in personally relevant antecedent contexts to attain personally important outcomes. Comparator was control‐training, in which participants selected both the alternative behaviors and alcohol drinking an equal number of times. Training was completed at baseline, after 3 days and after 1 week.MeasurementsPrimary outcome was change in automatic and self‐reported (negative/positive) outcome expectancies of alcohol drinking from baseline to after 1 week. Secondary outcomes were change in weekly alcohol consumption, self‐efficacy, craving and motivation (and approach‐alcohol associations in Experiment 1). Moderators were baseline outcome scores, motivation, age and alcohol dependency.FindingsFindings of this study are as follows: stronger increase in negative outcome expectancies after ABC‐ than control‐training (Experiment 1: self‐report, 95% confidence interval of difference scores (CIdiff) = [0.04, Inf]; automatic, CIdiff = [0.01, Inf]; Experiment 2: self‐report, CIdiff = [0.16, Inf]; automatic, CIdiff = [0.002, Inf]). Stronger reduction in self‐reported positive outcome expectancies after ABC‐ than control‐training (Experiment 1: CIdiff = [−Inf, −0.01]; Experiment 2: CIdiff = [−Inf, −0.21]) but mixed findings on automatic positive outcome expectancies (Experiment 1: CIdiff = [−Inf, 0.02]; Experiment 2: CIdiff = [−Inf, −0.001]).ConclusionsABC‐training may change outcome expectancies of alcohol consumption, but testing of clinically relevant effects in other samples is warranted.