Researchers have relied primarily on self-report questionnaires to measure alcohol expectancies. These questionnaires assess explicit expectancies about alcohol but donot provide any measure of the implicit processes that might also play an important role in determining drinking. The implicit association test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & L. K. Schwartz, 1998), a reaction time task, measures differential associations of 2 target concepts with an attribute. In this study, the IAT provided a measure of the strength of associations of alcohol concepts to positive or negative outcomes in memory. This implicit measure of alcohol expectancies successfully predicted alcohol use in 103 undergraduates. The findings also supported the hypothesis that an implicit measure of expectancy can add to the predictive power of existing questionnaire-based measures.

Research suggests that rumination increases anger and aggression. Mindfulness, or present-focused and intentional awareness, may counteract rumination. Using structural equation modeling, we examined the relations between mindfulness, rumination, and aggression. In a pair of studies, we found a pattern of correlations consistent with rumination partially mediating a causal link between mindfulness and hostility, anger, and verbal aggression. The pattern was not consistent with rumination mediating the association between mindfulness and physical aggression. Although it is impossible with the current nonexperimental data to test causal mediation, these correlations support the idea that mindfulness could reduce rumination, which in turn could reduce aggression. These results suggest that longitudinal work and experimental manipulations mindfulness would be worthwhile approaches for further study of rumination and aggression. We discuss possible implications of these results.

Future research should explore both biological and psychological processes that may explain the association between worse memory performance and subsequent increases in depressive symptoms.

This study examined whether widely accepted suicide risk factors are useful in predicting suicide-related hospitalization, beyond history of a suicide attempt, in high-risk treatment-seeking veterans with depression and substance dependence. Negative mood regulation expectancies were the only significant predictor of hospitalization during six-months of outpatient treatment. History of a suicide attempt was the only significant predictor of hospitalization during the one-year follow-up period. Results suggest that within high-risk populations, standard suicide risk factors may not identify individuals who will engage in suicidal behaviors resulting in hospitalization. Assessing negative mood regulation expectations may assist in identifying those most at risk.