Alcohol and emotion: Analyzing convergence between facially expressed and self-reported indices of emotion under alcohol intoxication.

Objective: Emotion measurement is central to capturing acute alcohol reinforcement and so to informing models of alcohol use disorder etiology. Yet our understanding of how alcohol impacts emotion as assessed across diverse response modalities remains incomplete. The present study leverages a social alcohol-administration paradigm to assess drinking-related emotions, aiming to elucidate impacts of intoxication on self-reported versus behaviorally expressed emotion.

Method: Participants ( = 60; = 22.5; 50% male; 55% White) attended two counterbalanced laboratory sessions, on one of which they were administered an alcoholic beverage (target blood alcohol content .08%) and on the other a nonalcoholic control beverage. Participants in both conditions were accurately informed of beverage contents and consumed study beverages in assigned groups of three while their behavior was videotaped. Emotion was assessed via self-report as well as continuous coding of facial muscle movements.

Results: The relationship between self-reported and behaviorally expressed emotion diverged significantly across beverage conditions: positive affect: = -0.174, = -2.36, = .022; negative affect, = 0.4319, = 2.37, = .021. Specifically, self-reports and behavioral displays converged among sober but not intoxicated participants. Further, alcohol's effects on positive facial displays remained significant in models controlling for self-reported positive and negative emotion, with alcohol enhancing Duchenne smiles 20% beyond effects captured via self-reports, pointing to unique effects of alcohol on behavioral indicators of positive emotion.

Conclusions: Findings highlight effects of acute intoxication on the convergence and divergence of emotion measures, thus informing our understanding of measures for capturing emotions that are most proximal to drinking and thus most immediately reinforcing of alcohol consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).