COGNITIVE-FUNCTIONING AND THE INHIBITION OF ALCOHOL-INDUCED AGGRESSION

Objective. A highly replicable research finding is that alcohol intoxi cation tends to induce aggressive responding. Recent research investig ating the role of cognitive function in this relationship has shown th at individuals who perform poorly on certain cognitive casks have diff iculty responding to contingencies to inhibit aggression, while high p erformers do not. High performers, however, do show increased aggressi on while intoxicated. This study investigated whether subjects with ab ove average cognitive functioning would, when intoxicated, inhibit agg ression in order to attain monetary reward. Method: Men (N = 43), aged 18-30, selected on the basis of high performance on a neuropsychologi cal test putatively assessing function of dorsolateral prefrontal cort ex, the spatial conditional associative learning task, participated in a modified version of the Taylor Aggression Task. Half the subjects w ere acutely alcohol intoxicated, the other half were sober. Furthermor e, half the subjects in each of these groups received contingent monet ary reward for choosing lower shocks. Aggression was defined as shock intensity delivered to a sham opponent. Results: Contrary to the hypot hesis, intoxicated subjects, even though significantly impaired cognit ively relative to their nonintoxicated peers (F = 4.29, 1/41 df, p < . 05), appeared to have no difficulty inhibiting their aggression in ord er to gain monetary reward. That is, there was no difference between i ntoxicated and nonintoxicated subjects on the dependent variable, shoc k intensity, when contingent money was available (F = .01, 1/20 df, p = .935). Conclusion: This finding provides further evidence that alcoh ol-induced aggression is not a uniform phenomenon, and it suggests a n europsychological mechanism that may mediate the relationship. It may be that individuals with above average cognitive abilities retain suff icient residual functioning to inhibit aggressive responding, even whe n acutely alcohol intoxicated.