Power of being present: the role of mindfulness on the relation between men's alcohol use and sexual aggression toward intimate partners

Abstract

The primary aim of this investigation was to examine the association between men's level of mindfulness and histories of alcohol consumption and sexual aggression toward intimate partners. Participants were 167 heterosexual drinking males who completed self-report measures of mindfulness, frequency and quantity of alcohol consumption during the past 12 months, and sexual aggression against intimate partners during the past 12 months. Results indicated that a history of consuming larger amounts when drinking was associated with more frequent sexual coercion/aggression among men who reported low, but not high, levels of mindfulness. However, drinking more frequently by itself was not associated with more frequent sexual coercion/ aggression. These results support the attention-allocation model and suggest implications for future intervention research aimed at reducing alcohol-related aggression. KeywordsIntimate Partner Violence; Alcohol Consumption; Attention-Allocation; Mindfulness Evidence for the link between alcohol use and sexual aggression is well-established (for reviews, see Abbey, Zawacki, Buck, Clinton, & McAuslan, 2004;Testa, 2002). However, despite a substantial literature in this area, interventions aimed at reducing alcohol-related aggression have only begun to take shape. Recently, Giancola, Josephs, DeWall, and Gunn (2009) proposed preventative strategies for alcohol-facilitated aggression based upon the attention-allocation model (AAM; Pernanen, 1976;. The AAM is an empirically supported and widely accepted explanation for intoxicated behavior (Giancola & Corman, 2007;Steele & Josephs, 1988;Zeichner, Allen, Giancola, & Lating, 1994). According to the AAM, alcohol intoxication impairs executive cognitive functioning, which then restricts the inebriate's ability to perceive and process instigatory and inhibitory cues. Because in most real-world situations cues that instigate behavior are more salient and easier to process than cues that inhibit behavior, intoxication is likely to produce myopia toward cues that instigate behavior (e.g., desire to have sex). Furthermore, this model is in line with past research demonstrating that alcohol impairs self-awareness processing (Hull, 1981;Hull, Levenson, Young, & Sher, 1983), which may impede a person's capacity to process self-relevant cues that discourage aggressive behavior.2 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 5010, Atlanta, Georgia, parrott@gsu.edu, NIH Public Access In accordance with these data, Giancola and colleagues (2009) argued that interventions designed to increase mindfulness may serve to decrease aggression in intoxicated individuals by shifting attention back to inhibitory cues (e.g., social norms that proscribe sexual aggression). Indeed, mindfulness is a state, trait, and acquirable skill that has been defined as "the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment...

Partner-specific anger management as a mediator of the relation between mindfulness and female perpetrated dating violence.

“…Research has demonstrated that alcohol use and mindfulness interact to predict male perpetrated sexual aggression (Gallagher et al, 2010), and research could examine whether alcohol use, a robust correlate of dating violence perpetration, interacts with mindfulness to predict female aggression. Mindfulness has also been conceptualized by researchers in number of ways, including as a single facet, as including two facets, and five.…”

“…Both of the above studies did not distinguish with whom the aggression was perpetrated against. Finally, Gallagher, Hudepohl, and Parrott (2010) found that increased mindfulness was negatively associated with sexual aggression perpetration against a dating partner within a sample of male college students. All of the above studies assessed mindfulness unidimensionally.…”

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beer Holder: An Initial Investigation of the Effects of Alcohol, Attractiveness, Warmth, and Competence on the Objectifying Gaze in Men

“…One means of accomplishing this is through mindfulness-based interventions, which could be used to boost selfreflection and outcome evaluation in ways that counteract myopia and reduce men's objectification of women. Supporting this possibility are correlational findings that heavy drinking is associated with sexual aggression only among men low in mindfulness (Gallagher et al 2010).…”

Mechanisms of Alcohol-Facilitated Intimate Partner Violence

“…Meta-analytic reviews evidence smaller effect sizes of alcohol on aggression when participants are distracted (Bushman & Cooper, 1990). Cross-sectional studies suggest that heavy drinking is associated with IPV primarily among individuals who endorse dispositional tendencies in aggression-related cognitive biases (e.g., high hostility; Leonard & Blane, 1992) or who are susceptible to alcohol-related shifts in attention toward instigatory cues (e.g., low mindfulness; Gallagher, Hudepohl, & Parrott, 2010). To this end, prior research has demonstrated that individuals at risk for aggression show attentional biases toward aggression-relevant contextual stimuli (Eckhardt & Cohen, 1997; Smith & Waterman, 2004).…”