Brief Report Situational Influences on CuesUsedto JudgeIntoxication JANICE G. WILLIAMS, PH.D., AND W. JEFFREY BURROUGHS, PH.D.* Department of Psychology, Box341511, Brackett Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina29634-1511 ABSTRACT. Subjects' perceptions of cues used tojudge intoxication across different drinkingsettings were investigated. College students (N = 40) werepresented with 12one-paragraph scenarios, fourfor each of three types of drinking expectancy: tension reduction, social disinhi- bitionandphysical impairment. Pilot testing confirmed thatthe scenar- ios accurately represented these different expectancies. Subjects rated the importance of 18 cues to intoxication for judging intoxication in each of the 12 scenarios. Results indicated that 15 of the 18 cues wereper- ceivedto be differentially important in the three types of situations. These results suggest that subjects apply cues to intoxication dif- ferently in different situations. (J. Stud. Alcohol 55:751-753, 1994) HERE ISconsiderable research literature evaluating the ability of alcoholics (e.g.,Lansky et al., 1978; Silverstein et al., 1974) andnonalcoholics (e.g.,BoisandVogel-Sprott, 1974; Huber et al., 1976) to estimate blood alcoholconcen- tration(BAC) accurately. This research is based on an inter- nal-external dimension of cues to intoxication. Inter- nal cuesare physicaland emotional states associated with alcohol use.External cues are quantitative measures of the amount of alcohol consumed. Although laboratory studies of BAC discrimination have indicated that trained social drinkers can use thesecues to make accurateestimates, field studies using untrained drinkers areless clear. An empirical study of subjects' perceptions of cues to in- toxication(Williams et al., 1991) indicated that untrained so- cial drinkers' similarity ratings of cues to intoxication formedthreeclusters: impairment (cues related to disorien- tation and lossof control), self-observation (cuesrelatedto social disinhibition) and relaxation(cues relatedto alcohol- induced tension reduction). This alternative organization of cues suggests thatin nonlaboratory settings judgments of in- toxication may be based on different criteria thanthose used in moreconstrained laboratory environments. Social learningtheories of alcoholuse (Abrams and Ni- aura, 1987; Collins et al., 1985) suggest that cues to intoxi- cation may be associated differently with differentdrinking environments. For example, Sher(1985) foundthatsubjects drinkingin groups experienced stronger effectsof alcohol than did subjects drinking alone. Similarly, Fromme and Dunn (1992) found that the socialcontextof drinking af- fectedsubjects' perceptions of their own behavior when in- toxicated. Different cues may therefore be applicable to different drinking environments. Received: April 22, 1993.Revision: November 19, 1993. *W. Jeffrey Burroughs is with the Divisionof SocialSciences, Brigham YoungUniversity-Hawaii, Laie, Hawaii. 751 Similarly, the large literature on alcoholexpectancies (e.g., Christiansen et al., 1982; Goldman et al., 1987) sug- gests thatlearned expectancies for consequences of alcohol use are important predictors of drinkingpatterns and re- sponses to alcohol. Stronger expectancies for the effects of alcohol have been found to produce stronger perceived changes asa result of drinking (Sher, 1985).In fact, alcohol expectancies may havea morepowerful effecton behavior than does alcohol itself. Lang et al. (1975)found that subjects who believed that they had consumed alcohol were provoked to aggression moreeasily thanwere subjects who believed thattheyhadconsumed a nonalcoholic beverage, regardless of the actual content of thebeverage. Since expectancies for theeffects of alcohol aresituationally specific, it followsthat cues to intoxication associated with those expectancies are likely to be situationally specific. This study investigated subjects' perceptions of cues used to judge intoxication across different drinking settings. We presented subjects with writtenscenarios representing three different types of drinking situations, consistent with three alcohol expectancies takenfrom the research of Southwick et al. (1981) and Brown et al. (1980), and asked them to rate the importance of variouscues to intoxication.It was ex- pected thatthe various cues wouldbe rated asdifferentially important in the threedifferent typesof situations, support- ing the notion thattheparticular typeof intoxication cueap- plied depends on the situation. Method Subjects Sixty (30 male, 30 female) undergraduate Introduct- ory Psychology students participated (mean age = 19.3 years).All subjects were drinkers and participated for extra course credit.