Drunks aware but don’t care, study shows

A new study says that people who commit blunders while under the
influence of alcohol know they're doing it; they just don't
care.

This means buzzed or drunk people who engage in embarrassing or
harmful behavior can't blame it on not having control, said
researcher Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology at
the University of Missouri-Columbia.

While this isn't the first study that shows alcohol alters the
behavior of those who consume it, "It's the first to show they
don't care that they're making mistakes," said Bartholow, chief
researcher on the study.

Brain tests during the study of 67 people in Columbia, Mo.,
showed that alcohol dulls a mechanism in the brain that tells
individuals to put on the brakes when they realize they're making
mistakes.

When the mechanism is working, "They slow down and try not to
make the mistake again, or they take corrective action," Bartholow
said.

Introduce alcohol and people are more likely to disregard the
moral stop sign, he said, even though they know what they're
doing.

The study involved people between the ages of 21 and 35,
students and nonstudents.

• Researchers gave a third of the participants drinks with
enough alcohol to raise their blood levels to just under the legal
driving limit of .08 percent, Bartholow said. They all got the same
amount so researchers didn't measure if the effect was gradual.

• Researchers gave a third of the participants placebo drinks;
they didn't know whether the drinks contained alcohol.

• A third consumed drinks they knew contained no alcohol.

Then the groups were given tasks designed to elicit mistakes.
Researchers measured changes in participants' mood, their accuracy
in computer tasks and how they perceived their accuracy in the
tasks.

Bartholow said the researchers used devices on the participants
to measure brain activity as the subjects took the tests. Medical
technology exists to measure brain activity for impulse control,
emotion, mood and other functions.

Nondrinkers had normal activity in the part of the brain that
regulated recognizing mistakes. Drinkers had less activity, he
said.

Nondrinkers who made mistakes slowed down and tried to correct
the errors, he said. Drinkers made less of an effort or simply
moved past their errors, the researcher said, even though they knew
they'd made errors.

Researchers also interviewed participants after the tests, which
helped affirm the findings in the computer tests, he said.

The dulling of the brain's mistake alarm only occurred among
people who had alcoholic beverages, he said.

"Normally, someone who makes mistakes is aware and makes an
effort not to make that mistake again," Bartholow said. The people
in the alcohol group were less likely, however, to slow down and be
more careful, but they realized they had made errors.

"Using alcohol doesn't allow someone to escape culpability," he
said.

Dr. Douglas Schuerer, a trauma surgeon with Barnes-Jewish
Hospital, said the findings aren't a surprise. "This says that
people should think before they drink," he said.

That advice goes beyond New Year's Eve and its tradition of
drinking: "It's something that needs to be considered 365," he
said.

Many of Schuerer's patients are people from the hospital's
emergency room who need surgery.

"About 50 percent of patients we see from traffic accidents,
alcohol was involved," he said. "That doesn't always mean they were
drinking; sometimes they were hit by a drunk driver."

In addition, he said he sees more personal injury accidents
involving people impaired by alcohol.

The findings have a flip side, Bartholow said. A small amount of
alcohol may help people with anxiety disorders or those who are
hypersensitive to making errors, Bartholow said.

But he warns that "consistently drinking as a way to reduce
anxiety can lead to serious problems, including alcoholism."

Bartholow's study, "Alcohol Effects on Performance Monitoring
and Adjustment: Affect Modulation and Impairment of Evaluative
Cognitive Control," has been accepted for publication in a coming
edition of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. The National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the University of
Missouri Research Board paid for the study.

Leave a Reply