Drugs and Aggression Readily Mix; So What Now?

Abstract

Intoxicated aggression is both a dangerous and a costly problem for society, with alcohol being involved in over 50% of violent crimes, and the cost of alcohol-consumption-related crime being estimated at $205 billion in the United States alone. First, the authors reviewed the substantial evidence for the connection between alcohol consumption and aggression, and then they examined the risk factors for this problem. These included societal/cultural factors, such as availability and alcohol expectancies, and individual factors, such as demographic characteristics, personality, comorbid disorders, individual differences in response to alcohol, and cognitive functioning. Finally, interventions were suggested focusing on policy, alcohol sellers, treatments for alcohol abuse and dependency, anger management, pharmacology, and low executive functioning. Further efforts are still needed to target interventions to specific risk factors.

Effects of thought suppression on provoked men’s alcohol-related physical aggression in the laboratory.

“…Extant research has identified myriad individual differences that potentiate the alcohol-aggression relation (reviewed in Giancola et al, 2010; Pihl & Sutton, 2009). To advance this line of work, recent empirical (Gallagher & Parrott, 2011; Giancola & Corman, 2007) and theoretical (Giancola, Josephs, DeWall, & Gunn, 2009; Giancola et al, 2010) work has identified cognitive variables associated with regulation techniques that are theoretically indicated to reduce alcohol-related aggression.…”

Alcohol and public policy

“…This third perspective seeks to uncover the best methods of avoiding harm. For example, alcohol consumption has often been linked with increased rates of violence (Boden, Fergusson, & Horwood, 2012;Martin, 2001Martin, , 2009McKnight, 2002;Pihl & Sutton, 2009). Social scientists help to identify how public policy might assist harm prevention correlated to problem drinking (Bucholz & Robins, 1989;Crombie, Irvine, Elliott, & Wallace, 2007;Graham et al, 2011;Rossow, 2001;Toomey & Wagenaar, 1999;Wilson, Gunasekara, & Thomson, 2011).…”

Alcohol Reverses Religion's Prosocial Influence on Aggression

“…Acute alcohol intoxication is one of the strongest and best-replicated potentiators of aggression (e.g., Berman et al 2009;Bushman and Cooper 1990;Lang and Sibrel 1989;Leonard 2002;Murdoch, Pihl, and Ross 1990;Pihl and Peterson 1995;Pihl, Peterson, and Lau 1993;Testa 2002); however, it has never been assessed in the context of religiosity's impact on aggressive 283 behavior. This is surprising given that both religious belief and alcohol consumption are highly prevalent cultural practices in our society (Gallup 2011;Newport 2010) with a shared hypothesized mediator linking them to aggression (e.g., Bremner, Koole, and Bushman 2011;Pihl and Sutton, 2009): self-regulatory ability (Baumeister and Exline 1999;Baumeister and Vohs 2004;McCullough and Willoughby 2009).…”

“…Alcohol is well known to disrupt self-regulatory processes (Fernandez-Serrano et al 2010;Heatherton and Wagner 2011;Pihl and Sutton 2009), and there is evidence that men with impaired self-regulatory skills are at increased risk for alcohol-related aggression (Giancola 2004). In recent years, evidence has come to light suggesting that beneficial aspects of religiosity may also be mediated by self-regulatory ability (Desmond, Ulmer, and Bader 2008;McCullough and Willoughby 2009;Rounding et al 2012;Walker et al 2007;Welch, Tittle, and Grasmick 2006) and self-monitoring (McCullough and Willoughby 2009;Randolph-Seng and Nielsen 2007;Shariff and Norenzayan 2007;Wenger 2007), which is a central component of self-regulation (Baumeister and Exline 1999).…”