Low doses of alcohol have a selective effect on the recognition of happy facial expressions

Alcohol is one of the most widely used recreational drugs, yet it is associated with undesirable social behaviour. It is used primarily for its psychoactive properties, increasing sociability and talkativeness. We hypothesize that low doses of alcohol can improve the performance related to positive...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human psychopharmacology 2003-03, Vol.18 (2), p.131-139
Main Authors: Kano, Michiko, Gyoba, Jiro, Kamachi, Miyuki, Mochizuki, Hideki, Hongo, Michio, Yanai, Kazuhiko
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affect - drug effects
alcohol
Alcohol Drinking - psychology
Alcoholic Beverages
cognition
Discrimination (Psychology)
emotion
Ethanol - administration & dosage
Ethanol - blood
Facial Expression
Happiness
human study
Humans
Male
reaction time
Recognition (Psychology)
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:Alcohol is one of the most widely used recreational drugs, yet it is associated with undesirable social behaviour. It is used primarily for its psychoactive properties, increasing sociability and talkativeness. We hypothesize that low doses of alcohol can improve the performance related to positive emotional cognition. In this experiment, we examined the effect of low doses of alcohol on the processing of emotional facial expressions. Fifteen young male volunteers drank alcohol at volumes of 30, 60, 120 ml (0.14, 0.28, 0.56 g/kg) and performed discrimination tasks on morphed facial emotion expressions of anger, happiness, sadness and surprise‐neutral. One‐way ANOVA co‐varying pretreatment performances revealed significant differences between alcohol levels in happy face discrimination ( p
ISSN:0885-6222
1099-1077
DOI:10.1002/hup.440