Alcohol myopia: Its prized and dangerous effects.

Abstract

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.

The Effects of Alcohol Intoxication on Accuracy and the Confidence–Accuracy Relationship in Photographic Simultaneous Line‐ups

“…Participants in the study by Dysart et al learned and were tested on their memory for a person while they were either alcohol‐intoxicated or sober. The authors argued that these results are in line with alcohol myopia theory, which proposes that, when people are under the influence of alcohol, attention is allocated to the most immediate and salient cues in the environment, whereas peripheral and weaker cues that conflict with salient cues receive less attention (Steele & Josephs, 1990). They reasoned that intoxicated participants in their study focused on a salient feature (i.e., hairstyle) of the ‘culprit’, which led them to misidentify the innocent suspect in the perpetrator absent showup who had a similar feature.…”

The relationship between different dimensions of alcohol use and the burden of disease—an update

“…This association may have resulted, in part, from the causal impact of acute alcohol use on sexual decision‐making 107, resulting in condomless sex 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114. Alternatively, other variables could be causally responsible for the associations between alcohol use and HIV/AIDS, especially the effect of risk‐taking behaviours and other personality traits 96, 115.…”

Education, substance use, and HIV risk among orphaned adolescents in Eastern Zimbabwe

“…The increased risk of HIV infection may be attributable to the social consequences of substance use, which facilitates unprotected sex. The physiological effects of substance use on decision-making (Dingle & Oei, 1997; Simons, Maisto, & Wray, 2010; Steele & Josephs, 1990), the altered expectations of condom use when using substances (Gálvez-Buccollini et al, 2008; Maisto, Carey, Carey, & Gordon, 2002), and certain personality types being more likely to engage in all forms of risky behaviours (Cooper, Wood, Orcutt, & Albino, 2003; Hagger-Johnson, Bewick, Conner, O’Connor, & Shickle, 2011; Newcomb, Clerkin, & Mustanski, 2011), may increase the likelihood of risky sex and therefore HIV infection. Substance use is also likely to be on the causal pathway between orphanhood and increased risk of HIV acquisition as the significant association of orphanhood with higher numbers of partners disappeared after adjusting for substance use, implying that substance use may be a mediating factor for orphans.…”