Speeches, strangers, and alcohol use: The role of context in social stress response dampening Lindsay S. Ham * , Hilary G. Casner, Amy K. Bacon, Jennifer A. Shaver University of Arkansas, Department of Psychology, 216 Memorial Hall, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA article info Article history: Received 24 May 2010 Received in revised form 28 March 2011 Accepted 21 April 2011 Keywords: Alcohol Drinking Social anxiety Stress response dampening abstract According to the Stress Response Dampening model, problem drinking develops after learning that alcohol limits the stress response in anxiety-provoking situations. However, laboratory-based studies testing alcohol’s effects on social anxiety have yielded mixed results. The current study was the first to examine stress response dampening across two contexts: a performance-based (a speech) and an interaction-based (a conversation) social situation. Undergraduates (N ¼ 62; M age ¼ 22.85; 31% women; 81% Caucasian) were randomly assigned to consume an alcoholic (target BAC ¼ .08%; n ¼ 22), placebo (n ¼ 20), or nonalcoholic control (n ¼ 20) beverage followed by the anxiety-inducing social tasks. Results revealed a 3 (alcohol condition) Â 2 (social task condition) Â 4 (measurement point) interaction, controlling for baseline subjective state anxiety and trait social anxiety. The pattern of scores over the course of the task varied across alcohol conditions for the speech, but not the conversation. Specifically, participants in the alcohol and placebo conditions evidenced increased subjective anxiety following the first measurement point prior to the speech and their anxiety remained elevated at all subsequent measurements. Participants in the nonalcoholic control condition evidenced stable subjective anxiety ratings for all speech measurement points. Results did not support stress response dampening for either type of social situation. Instead, the only between-group difference found was that the placebo group reported greater subjective anxiety than the nonalcoholic control group after the speech. Concerns about alcohol’s negative effects on one’s performance might have led to increased anxiety. Findings shed light on previous inconsistent findings and highlight the need to consider context and timing in under- standing drinking to cope with social anxiety. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Drinking to alleviate discomfort or stress in social situations is generally viewed as a ubiquitous phenomenon. However, drinking to cope with negative affectdsuch as social anxietydis associated with problematic alcohol use patterns (e.g., Ham, Bonin, & Hope, 2007; Ham, Zamboanga, Bacon, & Garcia, 2009; Lewis et al., 2008; Stewart, Morris, Mellings, & Komar, 2006). Over time, drinking to cope with social anxiety may reach pathological levels, such as that seen in cases of concurrent social anxiety disorder and an alcohol use disorder (see Carrigan & Randall, 2003; Morris, Stewart, & Ham, 2005). National epidemiological studies indicate that 48% of those ever diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, characterized by a persistent and marked fear of one or more social or performance situations in which one might be embarrassed or humiliated (American Psychological Association, 2000), have also met criteria for an alcohol use disorder at some point in their lives (Grant et al., 2005). Further, social anxiety disorder appears to be a unique risk factor for developing an alcohol use disorder: adolescents diagnosed with social anxiety disorder at baseline were 4.5 times more likely to meet alcohol dependence criteria 14 years later than individuals without social anxiety disorder (Buckner et al., 2008). Given that social anxiety disorder symptoms begin by adolescence (Falk, Yi, & Hilton, 2008; Grant et al., 2005) and approximately 12 years before an alcohol use disorder (Falk et al., 2008), secondary prevention efforts may be useful in reducing this risk. However, an understanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of drinking to cope with social anxiety is needed to inform potential prevention efforts. Several models of alcohol use posit that alcohol reduces nega- tive affective states (e.g., Conger, 1956; Khantzian, 1985; Sher & Levenson, 1982), suggesting that alcohol use disorders might develop in individuals with social anxiety disorder following * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 479 575 4256; fax: þ1 479 575 3219. E-mail addresses: lham@uark.edu (L.S. Ham), hcasner@uark.edu (H.G. Casner), akbacon@uark.edu (A.K. Bacon), jashaver@uark.edu (J.A. Shaver). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbtep 0005-7916/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2011.04.004 J. Behav. Ther. & Exp. Psychiat. 42 (2011) 462e472