Beyond their implications for understanding acute effects of alcohol on cognition, the current findings more generally suggest an important role for affect in self-regulatory processes. Theorists have long argued that cognitive processes cannot be fully understood without accounting for effects of highly interdependent affective processes (Izard, 1993; LeDoux, 1996), an argument that also has been applied to understanding alcohol’s acute effects (Curtin & Lang, 2007). The present data are wholly in-line with this view. Here, experiencing less negative affect after alcohol ingestion predicted smaller ERN amplitudes during the WIT, which in turn appeared to predict less effective performance adjustment following errors. In short, and consistent with other work (Gehring & Taylor, 2004; Hajcak & Foti, 2008; Hajcak et al., 2005), the current data suggest that the extent to which response outcomes are experienced as “worse than expected” (Holroyd & Coles, 2002)—and, therefore, activation of the ACC occurs—can critically depend upon tonic levels of negative affect.
