Pick your poison: stimuli selection in alcohol-related implicit measures.

ABSTRACT

It is common for people to report strong preferences for certain types of alcohol, often as a function of past positive or negative experiences with particular types of drinks. Despite this individual difference, implicit measures related to alcohol frequently use nomothetic approaches--i.e., use a standard set of alcohol beverage stimuli--which may not match individuals' actual drinking behavior. Moreover, this mismatch may account for some of the inconsistencies across studies using implicit measures. The present study used an idiographic variant of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in which participants (N=300) selected alcohol images that matched their drinking behavior (non-drinkers selected what they were offered most often). Results were consistent with previous research on alcohol preference women selected more liquor and wine images, men selected more beer images; heavy episodic drinkers selected more beer and liquor images and selected fewer wine images than lighter drinkers and non-drinkers. In addition, IAT scores were sensitive to drinking levels in the expected direction and, importantly, were robust to stimuli selected. Thus, results provide initial validation of idiographic approaches to stimuli selection.