Effects of fear and causal attribution about alcoholism on drinking and related attitudes among heavy and moderate social drinkers

Abstract

Based on the fear appeal literature, it was predicted that a fear-arousing message opposing alcohol abuse would be more effective when it attributed alcoholism to maladaptive learning than when alcoholism was attributed to an incurable disease, while with a low fear message these causal attributions might have opposite effects. While this prediction was supported for adaptive attitudes and intentions to reduce drinking, especially for heavy social drinkers, none of the experimental messages produced any reduction in actual daily drinking among either heavy or moderate drinkers, the two groups included in this experiment. It was also found that the high fear messages, and to a lesser extent the low fear messages, greatly reduced the normally positive correlation (observed in the control group) between intentions to reduce drinking and actual drinking reduction (throughout a 1-month follow-up period). The possibility that the fear messages may have undermined subjects' expectations about coping with the danger of alcoholism, and the practical implications of these findings are discussed.