ArticlePsychological science2013
How bad could it be? Alcohol dampens stress responses to threat of uncertain intensity.
Article in Psychological science, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05692830 (Towards a Wearable Alcohol Biosensor), which is not on this map. Cited by 56 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Towards a Wearable Alcohol Biosensor: Examining the Accuracy of BAC Estimates From New-Generation Transdermal Technology Using Large-Scale Human Testing and Machine Learning Algorithms
Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Frontal midline theta reflects anxiety and cognitive control: meta-analytic evidence.Journal of physiology, ParisPooled it
- Acute prazosin administration does not reduce stressor reactivity in healthy adults.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Alcohol's effects on emotionally motivated attention, defensive reactivity and subjective anxiety during uncertain threats.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2017Trial
- Longitudinal associations between binge drinking and changes in behavioral and neural threat reactivity in youth.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Decoding the bidirectional links between alcohol misuse and aggression: toward a unified translational framework.Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Efficacy of Coping with Negative Affect via Alcohol Use Pre- and Post Acute Stress.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The impact of alcohol on brain response in social context: A hyperscanning alcohol-administration trial.NeuroImage · 2025Article
- Heightened subcortical reactivity to uncertain-threat is associated with future internalizing symptoms, conditional on stress exposure.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Altered Effective Connectivity During Threat Anticipation in Individuals With Alcohol Use Disorder.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2025Article
- Sleep quality impacts the link between reactivity to uncertain threat and anxiety and alcohol use in youth.Psychophysiology · 2024Article
- Alcohol use and the pain system.Advances in drug and alcohol research · 2024Review
- Substance use patterns among a global sample of transgender and non-binary people during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC global and public health · 2023Article
- Behavioral and brain reactivity to uncertain stress prospectively predicts binge drinking in youth.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Article
- College students' momentary stress and prescription drug misuse in daily life: Testing direct links and the moderating roles of global stress and coping.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2023Article
- Threat effects on attention networks in individuals with a history of externalizing behaviors.International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- A social contextual review of the effects of alcohol on emotion.Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior · 2022Article
- Alcohol's effects during uncertain and uncontrollable stressors in the laboratory.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2022Article
- Childhood Adversity and the Association Between Stress Sensitivity and Problematic Alcohol Use in Adults.Journal of traumatic stress · 2022Article
- Binge ethanol consumption-associated behavioral impairments in male mice using a gelatin-based drinking-in-the dark model.Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Shared and unique neural circuitry underlying temporally unpredictable threat and reward processing.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Stress response dampening is an important motive for alcohol use. However, stress reduction via alcohol (alcohol SRD) is observed inconsistently in the laboratory, and this has raised questions about the precise mechanisms and boundary conditions for these effects. Emerging evidence indicates that alcohol SRD may be observed selectively during uncertain but not certain threats. In a final sample of 89 participants, we measured stress response via potentiation of defensive startle reflex in response to threat of shock in blocks with certain (low and high) and uncertain shock intensity. Our alcohol-administration procedure produced blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) across a broad range (0.00%-0.12%) across participants. Increasing BACs were associated with linearly decreasing startle potentiation and self-reported anxiety. This SRD effect was greater during uncertain than certain threat. More broadly, these results suggest that distinct mechanisms are involved in response to threats of uncertain intensity and threats of certain intensity.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.