Heavy social drinkers score higher on implicit wanting and liking for alcohol than alcohol-dependent patients and light social drinkers.
OBJECTIVE
Automatic hedonic ("liking") and incentive ("wanting") processes are assumed to play an important role in addiction. Whereas some neurobiological theories suggest that these processes become dissociated when drug use develops into an addiction (i.e., "liking" becomes weaker, whereas "wanting" becomes exaggerated; e.g., Robinson & Berridge, 1993), other theories suggest that there is a linear relationship between these two processes (i.e., both "liking" and "wanting" increase equally; e.g., Koob & Le Moal, 1997). Our aim was to examine "wanting" and "liking" in three groups of participants: alcohol-dependent patients, heavy social drinkers, and light social drinkers.


METHODS
Participants performed two different single target implicit association tests (ST-IATs; e.g., Bluemke & Friese, 2007) and explicit ratings that were designed to measure "liking" and "wanting" for alcohol.


RESULTS
Our results are in sharp contrast with the theories of both Robinson and Berridge and Koob and Le Moal: heavy drinkers had higher scores than light drinkers and alcohol-dependent patients on both the wanting ST-IAT and the liking ST-IAT. There were no differences between alcohol-dependent patients and light drinkers. Explicit ratings mirrored these results.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that our ST-IATs are not valid measures of "wanting" and "liking". Instead, they might assess more complex knowledge regarding participants' experiences and goals.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that the relationship between drug consumption and appetitive drug associations is not linear, highlighting the importance of testing both sub-clinical and clinical samples in future research.
Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium. Electronic address: Helen.Tibboel@UGent.be.
Helen
H
Tibboel
Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Jan
J
De Houwer
Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Adriaan
A
Spruyt
Brugmann University Hospital, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Damien
D
Brevers
L'Orée Day Center for Alcoholism, Brussels, Belgium.
Emmanuel
E
Roy
Brugmann University Hospital, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Xavier
X
Noël
D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology*; D001244:Association; D059333:Central Nervous System Sensitization / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged
Addiction; Alcoholism; Implicit measures; Incentive sensitization; Liking; Wanting