Towards an affect intensity regulation hypothesis: Systematic review and meta-analyses of the relationship between affective states and alcohol consumption

Abstract

While self-medication and positive and negative reinforcement models of alcohol use suggest that there is an association between daily affect and alcohol consumption, findings within the academic literature have been inconsistent. This pre-registered systematic review meta-analytically interrogated the results from studies amongst non-clinical populations that examine the relationship between daily affective states and alcohol consumption volume. PRISMA guided searches of PsychINFO, PsycARTICLES, Science Direct, PubMed, SCOPUS, and JSTOR databases were conducted. When both laboratory and field studies were included, meta-analyses with robust variance estimation yielded 53 eligible studies on negative affect (8355 participants, 127 effect sizes) and 35 studies for positive affect (6384 participants, 50 effect sizes). The significant pooled associations between intra-day affect and alcohol consumption were r = .09, [.03, .14] for negative affect, and r = .17, [.04, .30] for positive affect. A small-to-medium sized effect (d = .275, [.11, .44]) of negative affect on daily alcohol consumption volume was found in laboratory studies (14 studies, 1100 participants). While publication bias was suspected, P-curve analyses suggested that the results were unlikely to be the product of publication bias and p-hacking alone, and selection model analysis revealed no significant differences in results when publication bias was accounted for. For negative affect, using number of drinks as the measure of alcohol consumption was associated with lower effect sizes. For positive affect, the results demonstrated a decline of this observed effect over time. Overall, findings point towards the possibility of developing an affect intensity regulation theory of alcohol use. Conceptualizing the mood-alcohol nexus in terms of affect intensity regulation may afford a more parsimonious explanation of alcohol consumption rather than viewing the behavior as being shaped by either positive or negative affective states.

UK alcohol consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of drinking motives, employment and subjective mental health

“…As such, it may be that the apparent effect of experiences of stress or anxiety on consumption [ 21 ] are mediated by variation in alcohol-related beliefs. Indeed, this research links theoretically with the self-medication hypothesis [ 24 ] that posits that alcohol is used as a means of improving low mood and/or ameliorating negative affective state or mental/physical states (although see [ 25 ], which suggests that a model of affect intensity regulation may be a more advantageous way of understanding the alcohol-mood nexus, rather than theorising about mood valence). It also aligns with pre-COVID research by [ 26 ] indicating that coping, enhancement, and conformity, but not social, motives were associated with problem alcohol consumption in the UK.…”

Affect and alcohol consumption: An ecological momentary assessment study during national lockdown.

“…We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study. The design, methodology, hypotheses, and analyses of this study were preregistered on the Open Science Framework on the 2nd June 2020, after the commencement of data collection (https://osf.io/rphn4, Tovmasyan et al, 2020). Materials, data, and analysis code used in the study could also be found on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/dhk6j/, Tovmasyan et al, 2021).…”

“…These accounts are supported by research highlighting associations between poor mental well-being and alcohol consumption (Appleton et al, 2018) and by work indicating a high degree of comorbidity between alcohol use disorders, anxiety, and depression (Brière et al, 2014; Burns & Teesson, 2002). However, research guided by such theories has also produced inconsistent findings across studies of both state (for a recent review see Tovmasyan et al, 2022) and trait negative affect. Some research utilizing measures of state negative affect point to a direct relationship between increased negative affect and elevated consumption (Austin et al, 2020; Mc Hugh & McBride, 2020; Mohr et al, 2005, 2020; O’Hara et al, 2014; Richardson et al, 2020; Simons et al, 2005, 2014) while others have found an inverse association (i.e., increased negative affect being associated with reduced consumption; Bresin & Fairbairn, 2019; de Leon et al, 2020; Dvorak et al, 2018; Rohsenow, 1982; Simons et al, 2010), or that there was no association (Duif et al, 2019; Dvorak & Simons, 2014).…”

Circadian clock genesBmal1andPer2in the nucleus accumbens are negative regulators of alcohol-drinking behavior in mice

“…Alcohol consumption is influenced by emotional states 36 , and emerging evidence suggest an important role of clock genes in emotion regulation 37 . To identify potential links between emotional states and alcohol drinking, affective behaviors were assessed in mice of the current study before they were exposed to alcohol.…”