We explored potential sex and racial differences in the pattern of associations between positive/negative reinforcement and alcohol use outcomes. Overall, we observed similar patterns of associations between positive/negative reinforcement and alcohol consumption and AD across males and females, and across EA and AA subsamples that are consistent with findings from analyses conducted with the full sample as reported above. One exception was that, the hypothesis that the association between negative reinforcement and alcohol consumption became stronger in the presence of AD was supported in the EA subsample but not in the AA subsample. For AAs, results indicated that the association between negative reinforcement and alcohol consumption did not change with the presence of AD, although the direction of the interaction effect between negative reinforcement and AD observed was consistent with that observed for EAs and the full sample. This finding is consistent with previous findings that negative emotion is associated with alcohol use disorder for Whites but not for Blacks (Akins et al., 2010), further suggesting that pathways of risk to alcohol problems may differ across racial groups.
