Alcohol-Related Aggression: A Further Study of the Importance of Frustration

Abstract

This experiment investigated aggression as an interactive effect of alcohol and frustration in a situation where frustration was defined as strong and arbitrary and aggression as instrumental. 40 male subjects were randomly assigned to either an alcohol or a placebo group, each group further divided into an aggressive-cue group and a no-aggressive-cue group. Subjects either consumed an alcohol dose of 0.8 ml of pure alcohol per kg body weight or a placebo drink. Intensity and duration of shocks administered by subjects to a bogus partner in a supervision “cover task” were measures of relative aggression and absolute aggression was defined as number of shocks given. The aggressive cue manipulation had no effect, and both absolute and relative aggression increased only when intoxicated subjects were frustrated. Aggression was clearly of an instrumental kind with no ingredients of emotional aggression. The different dependent measures were highly intercorrelated and not associated with different types of aggression. The results were discussed as supportive of a model proposing a shift in attentional processes under alcohol to salient external features.