Why the Party Scene Can Trigger a Drink: The Role of Conditioning in Alcohol Use

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CHANGING THE WORLD ONE PERSON AT A TIME

Parties and social settings often come with lots of triggers that make people want to drink, even if they don’t have a serious drinking problem. A study by Van Dyke and Fillmore (2015) showed that just seeing alcohol-related cues like, pictures or objects connected to drinking can make social drinkers work harder to get alcohol. When exposed to these cues, people responded more strongly to earn drinks compared to neutral cues like food. Plus, those who regularly drank more were even more influenced by these reminders.

This is a clear example of classical conditioning: the party environment (a neutral stimulus) becomes linked with alcohol use (the unconditioned stimulus), causing a conditioned response, craving or wanting to drink, whenever the cues are present. Knowing this helps explain why breaking habits around drinking can be so tough and highlights the importance of managing environmental triggers.

Source: Van Dyke, N., & Fillmore, M.T. (2015). Operant Responding for Alcohol Following Alcohol Cue Exposure in Social Drinkers. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 6, 160. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00160

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