Brief Exposure to Pictures Depicting Poor Environments Leads to Increased Consumption of Beer in Adult Social Drinkers

Harrison, Neil and Youssef, Farid and Lyons, Minna (2018) Brief Exposure to Pictures Depicting Poor Environments Leads to Increased Consumption of Beer in Adult Social Drinkers. Substance Use and Misuse. ISSN 1082-6084

Text Manuscript_revised.docx - Accepted Version Download (306kB)

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested a trait-like association between neighborhood deprivation and alcohol consumption. However, it is not known whether temporarily manipulating poverty and affluence states by exposure to stimuli signifying resource-scarcity or resourcewealth
would influence alcohol-seeking behavior. Here, we aimed to investigate whether implicit exposure to affluence and poverty-related pictures would influence beer consumption.
Participants in a “poverty” group viewed pictures depicting impoverished environments,
and participants in an “affluence” group viewed images of wealthy environments.
After priming, participants were provided with nonalcoholic beer (which they were told was
alcohol-containing beer) and orange juice under the guise of a bogus taste test, to measure their alcohol-seeking behavior. Results showed that priming participants with a resourcescarce environment led to an increase in beer consumption (as a percentage of total fluid
consumed), compared to priming with a resource-rich environment. The same pattern of results was obtained in both a Western European sample (Experiment 1) and a West Indian sample (Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, we also tested whether risk-taking behavior, measured
by the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, was influenced by the environmental priming; no differences between groups were observed. These results provide the first experimental evidence that manipulation of poverty-affluence state, by brief exposure to pictures of impoverished
or wealthy neighborhoods, can influence alcohol-seeking behavior in adult social drinkers.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Drug Use and Misuse on 22 November 2018, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10826084.2018.1536151
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User:	Neil Harrison
Date Deposited:	10 Dec 2018 09:31
Last Modified:	29 Jun 2020 11:11
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2710

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