The experimenters view this as validation of the statement that drunk subjects are more aggressive because their working memory is contracted. When they are distracted, their aggression falls below normal levels.

However, when the drunk subjects are not distracted, they are particularly aggressive. This serves to elevate their attentional load.Īs you can see the aggression measured in the control subjects, it is about the same for both conditions. To look at the relationship between being attentionally myopic and being drunk, the researchers also had some of the drunk participants and some of the controls memorize a sequence of illuminated grid squares. The amount of aggression is measured by the size of the shock delivered. How you do this is you use something called the Taylor aggression paradigm wherein the participants can administer shocks to one another. Then they compared the ability to arose anger in subjects that were drunk compared to those that were not. Removed so that people won't think the Editor is an alcoholic and because I realized that they were talking about pure grain alcohol, not something 80 proof.) (Although I would call 1:5 pretty weak sauce.) (Ed. Science has now experimentally defined the screwdriver. Subjects in the alcohol condition were administered a dose of 1g/kg of 100% alcohol mixed at a 1:5 ratio with Tropicana orange juice. If you don't think that is fabulous in itself, then you should read this sentence that appears in the Methods section of the paper: It is in essence the horse-blinder theory of aggression. When they are focusing on something less provocative, they will become less provoked because they can more successfully ignore the provocative stimuli. This means that when they focus on something that is provocative, they will become super-provoked. The prevailing model to explain this effect is what is called the attentional allocation model wherein the alcohol inhibits an individual's ability to focus on a broad range of stimuli - they become attentionally myopic. Giancola and Corman wanted to know why drunks are more aggressive.

Paul campos the obesity myth