{"title":"Hostile attributional biases in severe alcohol use disorder: replication, gender specificity, and mechanistic insights.","authors":"Arthur Pabst, Mado Gautier, Pierre Maurage","doi":"10.1093/alcalc/agae010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Aims: </strong>Despite their importance in the emergence and persistence of severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD), social cognition impairments remain understudied in this population. Hostile attributional biases (HAB), a key component of social cognition, may be involved in interpersonal problems and SAUD maintenance. However, current evidence for HAB in SAUD is highly preliminary, as it relies on a single study based on a small sample and on a task that cannot dissociate increased hostile from reduced benign attributions. We therefore used an improved methodology to further characterize this bias and disentangle underlying mechanisms. In addition, we explored potential gender differences.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>A total of 56 patients (28 women) diagnosed with SAUD and 66 (27 women) demographically matched controls completed the Word-Sentence Association Paradigm-Hostility, which provides a valid, spontaneous, and relatively implicit assessment of both hostile and benign social attributions related to ambiguous situations. They also completed self-report measures of psychopathology and interpersonal problems.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>At the group-level, patients with SAUD presented higher HAB than controls, without group differences for benign attributions. Gender analyses revealed that this effect selectively emerged in men with SAUD. Further, patients' benign attributions did not differ from their hostile attributions. Finally, HAB (not benign attributions) were associated with interpersonal problems and state anxiety in patients.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>The association between SAUD and HAB at the group level is genuine and replicable across samples and tasks. This association may further selectively emerge in men. Our results also confirm the functional significance of HAB in SAUD, and point to potential mechanisms and clinical recommendations.</p>","PeriodicalId":7407,"journal":{"name":"Alcohol and alcoholism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Alcohol and alcoholism","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/alcalc/agae010","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"SUBSTANCE ABUSE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Aims: Despite their importance in the emergence and persistence of severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD), social cognition impairments remain understudied in this population. Hostile attributional biases (HAB), a key component of social cognition, may be involved in interpersonal problems and SAUD maintenance. However, current evidence for HAB in SAUD is highly preliminary, as it relies on a single study based on a small sample and on a task that cannot dissociate increased hostile from reduced benign attributions. We therefore used an improved methodology to further characterize this bias and disentangle underlying mechanisms. In addition, we explored potential gender differences.
Method: A total of 56 patients (28 women) diagnosed with SAUD and 66 (27 women) demographically matched controls completed the Word-Sentence Association Paradigm-Hostility, which provides a valid, spontaneous, and relatively implicit assessment of both hostile and benign social attributions related to ambiguous situations. They also completed self-report measures of psychopathology and interpersonal problems.
Results: At the group-level, patients with SAUD presented higher HAB than controls, without group differences for benign attributions. Gender analyses revealed that this effect selectively emerged in men with SAUD. Further, patients' benign attributions did not differ from their hostile attributions. Finally, HAB (not benign attributions) were associated with interpersonal problems and state anxiety in patients.
Conclusions: The association between SAUD and HAB at the group level is genuine and replicable across samples and tasks. This association may further selectively emerge in men. Our results also confirm the functional significance of HAB in SAUD, and point to potential mechanisms and clinical recommendations.
目的:尽管社会认知障碍在严重酒精使用障碍(SAUD)的出现和持续中起着重要作用,但对这一人群的研究仍然不足。敌对归因偏差(HAB)是社会认知的一个关键组成部分,可能与人际关系问题和 SAUD 的维持有关。然而,目前关于 HAB 在 SAUD 中的作用的证据还非常初步,因为它依赖于一项基于小样本的单一研究,以及一项无法将敌意归因的增加与良性归因的减少区分开来的任务。因此,我们采用了一种改进的方法来进一步描述这种偏差并厘清其潜在机制。此外,我们还探讨了潜在的性别差异:共有 56 名被诊断为 SAUD 的患者(28 名女性)和 66 名(27 名女性)人口统计学上匹配的对照组完成了 "单词-句子联想范式-敌意"(Word-Sentence Association Paradigm-Hostility)。他们还完成了有关精神病理学和人际关系问题的自我报告测量:在群体水平上,SAUD 患者的敌意归因高于对照组,而良性归因没有群体差异。性别分析显示,这种效应选择性地出现在男性 SAUD 患者身上。此外,患者的良性归因与敌意归因没有差异。最后,HAB(而非良性归因)与患者的人际关系问题和状态焦虑有关:结论:在群体水平上,SAUD 与 HAB 之间的关联是真实的,并且可以在不同的样本和任务中复制。这种关联可能会进一步选择性地出现在男性身上。我们的研究结果还证实了 HAB 在 SAUD 中的功能意义,并指出了潜在的机制和临床建议。
期刊介绍:
About the Journal
Alcohol and Alcoholism publishes papers on the biomedical, psychological, and sociological aspects of alcoholism and alcohol research, provided that they make a new and significant contribution to knowledge in the field.
Papers include new results obtained experimentally, descriptions of new experimental (including clinical) methods of importance to the field of alcohol research and treatment, or new interpretations of existing results.
Theoretical contributions are considered equally with papers dealing with experimental work provided that such theoretical contributions are not of a largely speculative or philosophical nature.