While most environments studied to date have been viewed as having durable effects on constitutional, motivational propensities and self-regulation, there are a range of possible situational environments that are associated with likelihood of consumption in humans and nonhuman animals. Although some of these would seem to be uniquely human (e.g., various celebrations and socially sanctioned rituals; MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969), others related to availability, cost, competing demands, and social stimulation would appear to be directly translatable and important for understanding human “real world drinking” where situational goads and constraints represent powerful but not absolute effects on behavior. The ultimate goal is to inform human alcohol use and dependence; establishing meaningful consilience of human and nonhuman animal studies represents considerably more than demonstrating similarity of inputs and genes on alcohol-related behaviors and establishing similar mediating processes linking genes and environments to phenotypes of interest.
