Taken together, despite the acknowledged limitations outlined above, the present results provide important insights into the way alcohol might impact on risky decision-making both in the laboratory and in everyday life. Our results indicate that early feedback processing and automatic adaptive behavior are intact under the influence of a moderate dose of alcohol, as reflected in normal FRN amplitudes. More importantly, alcohol-intoxicated individuals display aberrations in later stages of outcome evaluation and controlled adaptive behavior, as reflected in decreased P300 amplitudes in response to negative feedback. The data suggest that people, when intoxicated, may focus more on short-term positive consequences of their actions, ignoring potential harmful consequences on the long term.
