The current findings also are in-line with predictions made by two prominent models of alcohol’s acute effects on distress, namely, the appraisal-disruption model (Sayette, 1993) and the self-awareness model (Hull, 1981). The appraisal-disruption model predicts that, when consumed before the experience of a stressor, alcohol reduces NA by interfering with stressor appraisal. Our ERN findings are consistent with the idea that consuming alcohol limits the extent to which control failures are appraised as distressing. This finding is also consistent with the self-awareness model, which predicts that alcohol decreases negative self-evaluations after failure (e.g., Hull, Levenson, Young, & Sher, 1983). Future work should examine whether alcohol’s effects on self-regulatory failure reflect such decreased self-evaluations.
