AUTOMATIC ACTIVATION OF ALCOHOL CONCEPTS IN RESPONSE TO POSITIVE OUTCOMES OF ALCOHOL-USE

Seventy-one subjects with various levels of drinking experience comple ted a computerized semantic priming task. Prime phrases (describing po sitive outcomes of drinking alcohol or neutral phrases) were presented immediately before a target word (either alcohol-related or not). The results replicated earlier basic research examining the effects of se mantically related primes on the processing of subsequent words. Furth ermore, the results provided evidence that, for heavy drinking subject s, the presentation of phrases describing positive drinking outcomes s ignificantly primed, or facilitated, responses to the alcohol-related words, These results are consistent with the view that for some indivi duals, thoughts about certain outcomes automatically prime, or make ac cessible, concepts related to alcohol use, An increase in the accessib ility of these concepts has important implications for behavioral deci sions about alcohol consumption.