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A recent study conducted by the University of Georgia found that heavy alcohol drinkers are more likely to purchase alcohol at higher prices after experiencing stressful events.
The study was a collaboration between Max Owens, a second-year graduate student in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ clinical psychology program, James MacKillop, a former UGA associate professor in the department of psychology, now the Peter Boris Chair in Addictions Research at McMaster University and Lara Ray, an associate professor at the University of California.
Ray, who was one of the authors of the paper, was already studying the effects of stress on people’s craving for alcohol, and agreed to include a questionnaire that measured people’s willingness to spend money on alcohol in her study.
“There has been shown to be a relationship between people who are trying to quit using substances, in this case alcohol, relapsing when they’re in stressful situations, but the mechanism for that is not well known at this point,” Owens said. “So we thought that increases in the amount that people value alcohol may be able to explain some of that.”
The study looked at a group of people who were already heavy drinkers. Researchers brought them into the lab to examine recent events in their lives and compared stressful events with non-stressful events.
After the first visit, researchers wrote up scripts that narrated the stressful event and the neutral event, including details of what happened and how participants felt.
When participants came back for the next visit they were exposed to both the scripts of the stressful event and the neutral event, and after each of those scripts they were asked to complete questions such as how many drinks they would purchase at certain prices.
“Based on their answers to that questionnaire, following exposure to those two scripts, that’s how we were able to determine what their demand for alcohol was,” Owens said.
After hearing the script that recalled the stressful situation, the subjects were more willing to spend on alcohol, were more willing to buy drinks that were expensive and were more willing to spend a greater total amount.
They also said they would drink more if drinks were free and if money weren’t an object.
“We also calculated the elasticity of demand, which means how responsive their consumption of alcohol was to changes in price,” Owens said. “We found that their demand for alcohol was less responsive to changes in price following the stressful induction than the control one.”
Owens said people inherently place a natural value on any substance they might want, which can be measured by determining what someone would be willing to give up to get the substance — in this case, money.
“The idea is that they would give up more [money] to get alcohol, because alcohol is known to relieve stress for many people, and people frequently drink it to put off stressful events,” Owens said.
Owens said it would be hard to say if this could translate to anyone, such as college students who might have an increased urge to buy alcohol during times of stress.
“If they were already using alcohol to manage their stress, then it possibly could come out the same way, but for a lot of people, especially people who don’t drink at all, they will have other methods of dealing with stress,” Owens said. “Those people would have no increase in the value of alcohol.”
Danielle Chiavelli, a junior communication sciences and disorders major from Canton, said she doesn’t think that students would be more prone to drinking when they are stressed either, even during finals week.
“I wouldn’t drink, if I were stressed about exams I would want to study,” she said.
