Alcohol produces stimulant and sedative effects, and both types of effect are thought to influence drinking practices. This article describes the development and preliminary validation of the Biphasic Alcohol Effects Scale (BAES), a self-report, unipolar adjective rating scale designed to measure both stimulant and sedative effects of alcohol. An initial pool of 12 stimulant and 12 sedative items was derived from previous alcohol effect measures, and from descriptors of intoxication generated by subjects during interviews conducted on both the ascending and descending limbs of the blood alcohol curve. This item pool was administered to a sample of sober college students twice, with a 2-week inter-test interval. Items that were difficult to comprehend, or that had high ratings or low test-retest reliability, were eliminated, resulting in a seven-item stimulant subscale and a seven-item sedative subscale. These subscales showed high internal consistency in a sober state, which was not improved by additional item deletion. The data from this study also provided a basis for revising the instructions for the BAES. The new 14-item instrument was then given to 30 male and 12 female nonalcoholics on the ascending and descending limbs of the blood alcohol curve, after the administration of either 0.75 ml/kg alcohol (males) or 0.65 ml/kg alcohol (females). Internal consistency was high for both BAES subscales on both limbs of the blood alcohol curve (Cronbach's alpha = 0.85 to 0.94), and was not improved by additional item deletion. Factor analyses conducted on both limbs of the blood alcohol curve supported the proposed factor structure of the BAES.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

A tit-for-tat matching rule (Axelrod, 1984) describes much interpersonal behavior. Yet, in daily life a retaliatory aggressive response to a trivially mild provocation often inappropriately exceeds that expected from the matching rule. The concept of triggered displaced aggression can explain these exceptions to the matching principle. Building from the Cognitive Neoassociationistic model of aggressive behavior (Berkowitz, 1989, 1990, 1993), we developed a theoretical framework of social and personality factors that moderate and mediate the disjunctively escalated retaliation that can result from triggered displaced aggression. Major explanatory factors in our analysis of such effects are as follows: (a) aspects of the Time 1 provocation and the immediate situation in which it occurred; (b) characteristics of initial provocations and personality factors of the actor that produce the ruminative thought that will temporally extend the effects of a Time 1 provocation, allowing them to interact with a delayed Time 2 minor triggering event; and (c) actions and attributes of the target of displaced aggression that augment these effects.

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.

Few studies have addressed the distinction between concurrent polydrug use (various drugs used on separate occasions) and simultaneous polydrug use (the use of more than 1 drug at the same time). The authors assessed simultaneous polydrug use in a community sample to examine the prevalence of drug combinations, whether simultaneous can be distinguished from concurrent, and the prospective effects of these styles of drug use on subsequent health service utilization, physical symptoms, and psychological distress 4 years later. Marijuana and alcohol were the most common drugs used simultaneously, followed by alcohol and cigarettes. Simultaneous and Concurrent Polydrug Use formed 2 correlated but discriminable constructs. Neither Simultaneous nor Concurrent Polydrug use predicted subsequent Health Service Utilization, Physical Symptoms, or Psychological Distress. Data did reveal unique effects of specific drugs used simultaneously on these outcomes that were larger and more numerous than specific effects of concurrent drug use.

As part of a larger intervention study, the authors hypothesized that change rulers created for alcohol and safer sex would be equivalent to longer questionnaires. Ninety-six male college students completed rulers and questionnaires for assessing behavior change readiness. Participants' scores on the rulers significantly correlated with their scores on the questionnaires (r=.77 for alcohol; r=.77 for safer sex). In both domains, the rulers outperformed the questionnaires in predicting behavioral intentions, suggesting that the rulers had at least comparable concurrent criterion validity. This finding is the first of its kind in the safe sex literature and suggests that quick assessments of readiness to change are possible. Because the rulers are a continuous measure, the results are consistent with the idea that the change process is continuous rather than a series of discrete stages.