The Proximal Effects of Acute Alcohol Consumption on Male-to-Female Aggression

Abstract

The current meta-analytic review examined the experimental literature to quantify the causal effect of acute alcohol consumption on self-reported and observed indicators of male-to-female general, sexual, and intimate partner aggression. Database and reference list searches yielded 22 studies conducted between 1981 and 2014 that met all criteria for inclusion and that were subjected to full text coding for analysis. Results detected a significant overall effect (d = .36), indicating that male participants who consumed alcohol evidenced greater aggressive behavior toward females while completing a subsequent laboratory aggression paradigm than male participants who received no alcohol. We found homogeneity across all categories of potential moderator variables. Results further indicated that alcohol resulted in comparable increases of male-to-female sexual (d = .32) and intimate partner (d = .45) aggression. Further research is required to draw meaningful conclusions about individual and situational factors that may interact with acute alcohol consumption to produce the highest levels of risk.

Sex Differences in Problem Alcohol Use in High School as a Function of Recent Sexual Violence Victimization or Perpetration

“…Important research provides evidence that measures of distal (i.e., general alcohol consumption over the past year/month, alcohol dependence), proximal (i.e., frequency/quantity used in potential sexual situations), and event-level alcohol use (i.e., drinking during an SV incident) have all been linked to an increased risk of SVP (Abbey 2011;Abbey et al 2014;Crane et al 2016), particularly for adult men (Tharp et al 2013). The quantity of alcohol consumed on drinking days during high school has also been shown to prospectively predict single (but not multiple) incidents of SVP during college for young adult males (Wilhite and Fromme 2017).…”

Does Alcohol Contribute to College Men’s Sexual Assault Perpetration? Between-and Within-Person Effects Over Five Semesters

“…Men's HED is thought to contribute to sexual assault perpetration via alcohol's acute, pharmacological effect on physical and sexual aggression (see Crane et al, 2015;Ito et al, 1996, for reviews of this experimental literature). This acute effect is consistent with the Alcohol Myopia Model (see Giancola et al, 2010), which posits that intoxication narrows attention to more salient, typically instigatory cues (e.g., sexual arousal, Simons et al, 2016), while impairing the ability to attend to less salient inhibitory cues (e.g., woman's reluctance).…”

The influence of groups and alcohol consumption on individual risk-taking

“…Importantly, the contexts in which alcohol is consumed and the cultural beliefs and expectations of drunkenness may, in turn, influence drinking behaviour and people's representation of intoxication. Alongside pharmacological-driven intoxicated behaviours such as impaired co-ordination (Houa et al, 2010) and anterograde amnesia (memory loss; Perry et al, 2006), depictions of intoxication such as aggression (Crane, Godleski, Przybyla, Schlauch, & Testa, 2016;Ito et al, 1996) and promiscuity (Rehm et al, 2012;Scott-Sheldon et al, 2016) may be dictated by one's cultural and social understanding of 'drunkenness'. MacAndrew and Edgerton (1969) argue the supremacy of these socially and culturally defined depictions of drunken comportment over "toxically disinhibited brains operating in impulse-driven bodies" (p. 165).…”