Alcohol sensitivity has been proposed as a protective factor for women in the development of alcohol use disorders. Adult women appear to suffer more from the negative motor and cognitive deficits resulting from drinking in comparison to men (Nixon, 1994). Dougherty, Bjork, and Bennett (1998) conducted a study in which male and female participants consumed either three placebo or alcoholic beverages on six consecutive days. After ingestion, participants performed a rotary pursuit task. Within the alcohol group, women displayed greater impairment on the task relative to men, even with similar breath alcohol concentration levels. Furthermore, women actually became more sensitive to the negative effects of alcohol on their performance over the course of the experiment, and also reported increased feelings of intoxication. Men, however, were more likely to develop tolerance and fewer subjective intoxicating effects across days. While these findings provide subjective and objective measures of alcohol sensitivity for men and women, the study did not include a clinical sample of drinkers to determine whether the same differences exist for those already at or near meeting diagnostic criteria for alcohol use.
