Use of the WIT has three additional advantages for testing the current hypotheses. First, unlike most tasks used to investigate cognitive control (e.g., standard Stroop tasks), the stimuli in the WIT have motivational relevance for participants, and therefore errors carry motivational significance (see ; Amodio, Devine, & Harmon-Jones, 2008). Second, interracial interactions (even virtual ones) are known to produce anxiety (see Plant, 2004; Stephan & Stephan, 1985), which has been shown to influence performance on the WIT (Amodio, 2009). Thus, this task is well-suited to testing the implications of alcohol’s anxiety-reducing properties for self-regulatory cognitive control. Third, categorization errors in the WIT have been shown to elicit robust and reliable ERNs that predict increased response control (e.g., Amodio et al., 2004; Amodio, Devine, & Harmon-Jones, 2008), indicating that the evaluative control system is strongly engaged during task performance.
