Abstract
We examined the effect of alcohol intoxication on the display of nonverbal behaviors during discussions with dating partners about a relationship problem. Forty-four heterosexual dyads engaged in a 7-min conversation about a hypothetical infidelity. Males were randomly assigned to drinking condition (sober or .08 g/dl) and their behaviors were coded for behavioral expressivity, verbal expressivity, positive affect, and anxiety at 30 s and 3 min into the interaction. A series of 2 (drinking condition) × 2 (time) repeated measures analyses indicated that as time passed, drinkers nonverbally conveyed more agitation and less positivity, and consequently less pro-relational behavior. Further, drinkers showed more behavioral variability over time compared to their sober counterparts. The implications of these results for understanding alcohol-influenced communication in close relationships are discussed.
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Notes
To give the reader a sense of how much alcohol it takes to achieve a .08 g/dl breath alcohol concentration, a 220 lb. (99 kg.) male received approximately 8 oz. (226.80 g) of vodka.
Sometimes experiments use a balanced placebo design in the form of a 2 (alcohol: consume alcohol or not) × 2 (alcohol expectancy: believe you consumed alcohol or not) completely crossed design. These studies find that alcohol expectancies are powerful predictors of “deviant” social behaviors such as physical aggression and sexual behavior, even when participants drank a placebo (non-alcoholic) beverage. However, changes in physiological, psychomotor, cognitive processing, and mood are primarily pharmacological with little evidence suggesting any significant expectancy effects (see Hull and Bond 1986 for a meta-analysis). In addition, there are several problems associated with the balanced placebo design (Martin and Sayette 1993). For example, the alcohol dose must be significantly lowered for the person assigned to the “receive alcohol but believe myself to be sober” condition not to guess that he or she actually received alcohol. When the dose is lowered, alcohol’s effect on cognitive impairment is similarly decreased. Since the behavioral effects were hypothesized to be a function of cognitive impairment, we elected not to use the placebo design.
As an additional manipulation, females were instructed to either be accepting or rejecting of her partner’s behavior. This manipulation did not contribute any significant main effects (all Fs < 1.17, ps > .24) or contribute to a significant interactive influence with the alcohol manipulation (all Fs < .67, ps > .54) on any of the dependent measures of interest in this report.
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Acknowledgements
The authors extend their thanks to the UGA Institute for Behavioral Research for funding this project and to Samantha Barrientos, Todd Goen, Caren Palewitz, and Susan Simmons for their assistance with data collection and coding.
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Samp, J.A., Monahan, J.L. Alcohol-Influenced Nonverbal Behaviors During Discussions About a Relationship Problem. J Nonverbal Behav 33, 193–211 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-009-0069-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-009-0069-y