Chunk #10 — The role of romantic relationship status in pathways of risk for emerging adult alcohol use — Parental Alcohol Problems, Romantic Relationship Status, and Alcohol Use — Positive Affect Regulation Pathway from Parental Alcohol Problems to Romantic Relationship Status and Alcohol Use
The positive affect regulation pathway refers to emotionality characteristics that are associated with the use of alcohol for its positive reinforcement effects (i.e., feeling good) (Mezquita et al., 2015), and is closely tied to traits associated with perceiving alcohol use as rewarding (Sher et al., 2005). One of these traits is positive urgency, which is a positive emotion-based predisposition to rash action (Cyders & Smith, 2008; Cyders et al., 2007). Although the association between parental alcohol use disorder and positive urgency has not been explicitly examined in the past, there is evidence that parental alcohol use disorder is associated with deactivation in the fronto-parietal region in the context of an emotional Go-NoGo inhibitory task (Cservenka, Fair, & Nagel, 2014). This provides reason to believe that a parental history of alcohol problems might also predict difficulty controlling one's self in the context of positive emotions (i.e., higher levels of positive urgency). Positive urgency is a distinctive risk factor for alcohol use in emerging adulthood (Cyders et al., 2007), and there is longitudinal evidence that it predicts alcohol use above and beyond
