This article explains how alcohol makes social responses more extreme, enhances important self-evaluations, and relieves anxiety and depression, effects that underlie both the social destructiveness of alcohol and the reinforcing effects that make it an addictive substance. The theories are based on alcohol's impairment of perception and thought--the myopia it causes--rather than on the ability of alcohol's pharmacology to directly cause specific reactions or on expectations associated with alcohol's use. Three conclusions are offered (a) Alcohol makes social behaviors more extreme by blocking a form of response conflict. (b) The same process can inflate self-evaluations. (c) Alcohol myopia, in combination with distracting activity, can reliably reduce anxiety and depression in all drinkers by making it difficult to allocate attention to the thoughts that provoke these states. These theories are discussed in terms of their significance for the prevention and treatment of alcohol abuse.

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Where does self-esteem (SE) come from? Three experiments explored the idea that men's and women's SE arise, in part, from different sources. It was hypothesized that SE is related to successfully measuring up to culturally mandated, gender-appropriate norms--separation and independence for men and connection and interdependence for women. Results from Study 1 suggested that men's SE can be linked to a individuation process in which one's personal distinguishing achievements are emphasized. Results from Study 2 suggested that women's SE can be linked to a process in which connections and attachments to important others are emphasized. Study 3 demonstrated that failing to perform well on gender-appropriate tasks engendered a defensive, compensatory reaction, but only in subjects with high SE. These findings are discussed with regard to their implications for the structure and dynamics of the self.

Two experiments examined an attention-allocation model of alcohol's effect on psychological stress (Steele, Southwick, & Pagano, 1986). On the basis of this model, it was hypothesized that alcohol's impairment of information processing, coupled with the demands of distracting activity, would reduce anxiety over an upcoming stressful event by making it harder to allocate attention to thoughts about the event. Alcohol intoxication without a distracting activity was not expected to have an anxiety-reducing effect but possibly to increase anxiety by narrowing and constraining attention to the imminent stressor. Finally, the distracting activity in this experiment, without intoxication, was not expected to reduce anxiety. The present experiments tested this reasoning by crossing whether or not subjects had received alcohol (dose of 1 ml/kg) with whether they rated art slides or did nothing during the period prior to an expected stressful speech. As predicted, being intoxicated and rating slides reduced subjects' anxiety over the speech significantly more than any other condition in both experiments; being intoxicated and doing nothing significantly increased subjects' anxiety compared with the other conditions, but only when the data from both experiments were combined. Activity alone had no anxiety-reducing effect. These results are discussed as (a) supporting the role of cognitive impairment and attention allocation in mediating alcohol's anxiety-reducing effects, (b) clarifying conditions under which alcohol can increase anxiety, and (c) demonstrating the importance of activity in mediating the variability of alcohol's tension-reducing effects.It is not a sudden feeling. It slips up on you. The host hands you the glass. Your tongue, mouth, and throat experience a familiar flavor, a strong, attention-grabbing flavor, one that seems capable of altering your chemistry. You move on, sipping this flavor, talking to friends, acquaintances. Shortly, your immediate experience begins to take on a certain intensity. The present seems to move to the foreground of awareness. Thoughts about the past, the future, problems, and anxieties recede in awareness. They become more difficult to retrieve and hang onto. It is the present-the conversations, the salient events and thoughts-that reigns over awareness. The sipping continues, as if to further intensify the present, to further draw out its distinction from the rest of experience, to leave the rest behind. Like being on a raft that has shoved off from the bank, there is a lifting feeling of having broken away.Nearly everyone has experienced effects like these from drinking alcohol-a forgetting of worries, a relief from anxiety over upcoming events, intensified positive mood, and so on. It

Why do some people strive for high status, whereas others actively avoid it? In the present studies, the authors examined the psychological and physiological consequences of a mismatch between baseline testosterone and a person's current level of status. The authors tested this mismatch effect by placing high and low testosterone individuals into high or low status positions using a rigged competition. In Study 1, low testosterone participants reported greater emotional arousal, focused more on their status, and showed worse cognitive functioning in a high status position. High testosterone participants showed this pattern in a low status position. In Study 2, the emotional arousal findings were replicated with heart rate, and the cognitive findings were replicated using a math test. In Study 3, the authors demonstrate that testosterone is a better predictor of behavior than self-report measures of the need for dominance. Discussion focuses on the value of measuring hormones in personality and social psychology.