Induced public self-awareness (stimulated by exposure to mirrors and a camera) was hypothesized to increase salience of the situational behavioral standard (i.e., sober comportment), which increased motivation toward effortful performance. Shorter response time was obtained for the self-aware compared with the control group on a task that required the participant to identify correct and misspelled words (Ross & Pihl, 1988). This expectancy effect also was observed for at-risk college drinkers trained to reduce consumption by demonstrating that the students experienced enhanced mood and conviviality when they were induced to think they were consuming alcohol but were not (Fromme, Marlatt, Baer, & Kivlahan, 1994). As greater positive expectancies have been associated with binge drinking, expectancy differences appear to be a strong influence on alcohol's individual effects (Blume et al., 2003).
