William Corbin

Arizona State University | ASU · Department of Psychology

Simultaneous alcohol and cannabis (SAM) use and alcohol mixed with energy drinks (AmED) days are associated with heavier drinking and negative consequences compared to alcohol-only days. However, it remains unclear if SAM and AmED days differ from one another in terms of consumption and negative consequences. It also remains unclear how often days...

Background Simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use is associated with riskier daily drinking. However, little research has tested momentary mechanisms through which simultaneous use predicts continued drinking during acute drinking episodes. The current study tested whether simultaneous use moments predicted within‐episode increases in subjective res...

Objective: Decades of research has found support for the motivational model of alcohol use at the between-person level, yet research on event-level drinking motives is in its nascent stage. Similarly, drinking context has been largely ignored in studies of day-level motives. Therefore, the present study sought to test whether drinking context media...

Background Impulsive personality traits are strong, consistent risk factors for heavy drinking, and modern theories suggest that impulsive traits may also confer risk for internalizing symptoms. However, it remains unclear which specific impulsive traits are linked with heavy drinking versus internalizing symptoms, and whether heavy drinking and in...

Background: Simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use is associated with negative outcomes, yet little is known about what motivates the decision of simultaneous use. One possibility is that early-episode subjective effects motivate simultaneous use to complement or replace the first substance's effects. The current study used a hypothetical decision-m...

Pregaming represents a uniquely high-risk drinking event for young adults, and subfacets of impulsivity are robust predictors of alcohol use and related negative outcomes. Further, it is likely that pregame events contain social and physical stimuli that are particularly appealing for impulsive individuals, thus exacerbating risk for negative outco...

Objective: Sexually aggressive behavior (SAB), risky sexual behavior (RSB), and heavy episodic drinking (HED) are serious behavioral health problems among college men. The present study substantially revises and validates protective behavioral strategies (PBS) measures in the SAB and RSB domains; evaluates the relations among PBS usage in the SAB,...

Objective: Peer influences may play a maintaining or contributing role in alcohol-related sexually aggressive behavior (SAB) in undergraduates. Undergraduate men substantially overperceive their peers’ SAB-related attitudes and behaviors (i.e., show substantial misperception of SAB-related social norms). Moreover, men at high risk of perpetrating S...

Introduction Impulsive personality traits are associated with cannabis problems. Person-Environment Transactions Theory suggests that highly impulsive individuals behave differently in certain contexts, however little research has focused on the context in which cannabis is used. Therefore, the current study tested whether impulsive traits moderate...

Background Simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use (SAM) is associated with problem drinking. However, little is known regarding mechanisms of risk during drinking episodes. The current study tested whether subjective responses to simultaneous vs. alcohol-only use (i.e., high arousal positive/reward, high arousal negative/aggression, low arousal posi...

Objective: Alcohol craving is a predictor of continued drinking and a diagnostic criterion for alcohol use disorder. Rewarding subjective effects potentiate craving, but it remains unclear if relations are expectancy-driven vs. alcohol-induced. In addition, it remains unclear if relations operate solely at the person level, or if there is also with...

Objective: Concurrent and simultaneous cannabis and alcohol co-use confers risk for daily negative alcohol consequences. However, studies often treat co-use as a dichotomy, precluding examination of higher- and lower-risk co-use days. Additionally, little is known about specific alcohol consequences associated with daily co-use. Therefore, the curr...

Objective: Theoretical models of addictive behavior suggest that subjective effects serve as a mechanism through which substance use disorders develop. However, little is known about the subjective effects of simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use, particularly whether simultaneous use (a) heightens specific subjective effects or (b) is related to u...

Alcohol misuse represents a universal public health concern that spans multiple demographics. As such, understanding shared, biological indicators of alcohol-related risk is vital to implementing targeted prevention and intervention efforts. Self-report measures of subjective response to alcohol (SR) capture both psychological and pharmacological e...

Background: The legal cannabis landscape has greatly outpaced scientific knowledge. Many popular cannabis claims, such as cultivar (colloquially referred to as strain) classification and terpene content producing different subjective effects, are unsubstantiated. This study examined, for the first time, whether cultivar classification (sativa/indic...

Bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM) proclivity among college students is poorly characterized, in part because existing measures of BDSM proclivity highlight the consensual nature of BDSM and are appropriate for use with non-community members (e.g., those who may not understand BDSM jargon). The current study intro...

Acquaintance-initiated sexually aggressive behavior (SAB) is a widespread problem on college campuses, and intervention strategies thus far have not produced sustained reductions in SAB. Peer-related social norms and cognitive processes underlying sexual decision-making have separately been implicated in SAB. The present study integrates this work...

Introduction Solitary drinking (i.e., drinking alone) and coping drinking motives are risk factors for alcohol problems. Theoretical models suggest that solitary drinking and coping motives are highly related. However, the direction of effects between solitary drinking and coping motives is unclear. It also remains unclear if relations are present...

Objective: Decades of research has found support for the motivational model of alcohol use, such that positive/negative affect are indirectly associated with drinking behavior through drinking motives. However, research on event-level drinking motives is in its nascent stage, and studies have yet to consider how drinking context plays a role in the...

Objective: College athletes are a high-risk group for heavy drinking and related risky behaviors and consequences. However, most prior work examining drinking behavior in college athletes has been cross-sectional. Drinking norms predict drinking among athletes, but other potential risk factors, including personality traits have received limited att...

Social learning theories suggest that outcome expectancies are strong determinants of behavior, and studies find that alcohol and cannabis expectancies are associated with negative substance use outcomes. However, there are no measures to date that assess expectancies for simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use (SAM), often referred to as SAM, despit...

Objective: Research suggests that impulsivity is a risk factor for problem drinking, but prior studies have yet to examine typical drinking context as a potential moderator of relations between impulsivity and drinking outcomes. Guided by Person-Environment Transactions Theory, the current study tested whether five facets of impulsivity (negative...

Objective Naltrexone is an effective treatment for heavy drinking among young adults. Laboratory‐based studies have shown that naltrexone dampens the subjective response to alcohol and craving. However, few studies have tested naltrexone's dynamic, within‐person effects on subjective response and craving among young adults in natural drinking envir...

Recent studies have extended the acquired preparedness model to experimental data, finding that impulsivity predicts subjective alcohol response, a related yet distinct construct from expectancies. However, studies have not tested whether specific facets of impulsivity predict subjective response, or whether impulsivity indirectly predicts alcohol...

Objective: Several studies suggest that alcohol and cannabis co-users are heavier drinkers and experience more alcohol-related consequences. However, day-level associations between co-use and drinking levels are mixed. One reason may be that individual characteristics moderate the daily impact of using alcohol alone or in conjunction with cannabis....

Objective: The current project aims to enhance our understanding of the well-established relation between fraternity membership and sexual aggression on college campuses. Most prior research has been cross-sectional and unable to distinguish selection and socialization accounts of the relation, and only one prior longitudinal study has simultaneou...

Aims Theory‐driven, exploratory study to: (1) identify a reward drinking phenotype in young adults, (2) evaluate this phenotype as a predictor of naltrexone response, and (3) examine mechanisms of naltrexone in reward drinkers. Design Secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial. Setting USA. Participants 128 young adult (ages 18‐25) heav...

Although alcohol expectancies and subjective response are independent predictors of drinking, social–cognitive theory suggests that expectancies may distort one’s subjective response, creating discrepancies between expected and actual alcohol effects. A recent cross-sectional study found that unmet expectancies (using difference scores) were associ...

Prior research suggests that cannabis expectancies are related to cannabis misuse and problems. Although there are established measures of cannabis expectancies, existing measures have psychometric limitations and/or are lengthy. Existing measures typically have a two-factor structure of positive and negative expectancies, but recent conceptualizat...

Prior research demonstrates contextual influences on drug responses in both animals and humans, although studies in humans typically focus on only one aspect of context (e.g., social) and examine a limited range of subjective experiences. The current study sought to address these limitations by examining the impact of both social and physical conte...

Recent studies suggest that solitary (but not social) drinking may confer risk for negative alcohol consequences via beliefs about alcohol's ability to reduce tension, and explicit motivations to drink to cope with negative mood states. However, because prior studies are largely cross-sectional, it is unclear if tension reduction expectancies and d...

Objective The beginning of college is a period in which increased alcohol use often coincides with greater involvement in romantic relationships. Existing literature yields inconsistent findings regarding the influence of relationship types on drinking behavior, perhaps because these studies have not accounted for recent changes in the way college...

Background Alcohol consistently impairs response inhibition in the laboratory, and alcohol impairment of response inhibition may lead to excess consumption or increases in intoxicated risk behavior, both of which contribute to risk for alcohol‐related problems. To our knowledge, no prior studies have examined relations between alcohol impairment of...

Background Adolescent and young adult alcohol use is a major public health concern; alcohol is the most widely used substance by teenagers. It is imperative to better understand alcohol use during adolescence and early adulthood given the important changes that occur. Although numerous measures aim to capture alcohol use during this time, no existi...

Objective: Drinking goals set at treatment onset predict treatment outcome in patients with alcohol use disorders. Yet the cognitive constructs of goal setting and goal attainment are understudied in young adult drinkers. This study sought to examine how the interplay of goal setting and goal attainment during treatment impacts treatment outcome i...

Individual differences in subjective response (SR) to alcohol (e.g., stimulation, sedation) are a significant predictor of negative alcohol outcomes. Previous studies have reported ethnic differences in SR (e.g., between some Asian populations and Caucasians), but very few studies have examined SR among Hispanic/Latino individuals. To address this...

Variability in subjective response (SR) to alcohol predicts drinking and the development of Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs). Although both alcohol pharmacokinetics (i.e., absorption and metabolism) and SR are impacted by aspects of the drinking situation (e.g., rate of consumption), relations between individual differences in pharmacokinetics and SR h...

Objective: Previous studies have found preliminary evidence for associations between common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the cannabinoid receptor gene CNR1 and cannabis use and dependence. The present study examined a set of eight independent SNPs in or near CNR1 in relation to cannabis use measured longitudinally across emerging adult...

Purpose of Review The Biphasic Alcohol Effects Scale (BAES) is widely used to assess stimulant and sedative alcohol effects. This paper reviews (a) recent measurement developments, (b) behavioral and physiological correlates, and (c) the role of the BAES in refining theories of SR and pharmacological interventions. Recent Findings An abbreviated s...

Alcohol use disorders and internalizing disorders are highly comorbid, but how this comorbidity unfolds over development is not well understood. The present study investigated effects of internalizing symptoms in late childhood on speed of transition between three alcohol involvement milestones: first drink, first binge, and onset of first alcohol...

Background: Young adults with higher trait urgency (i.e., a tendency to act rashly in response to heightened affect) may be especially vulnerable to heavy drinking. The current study examined 1) the influence of urgency on daily relations between affect and drinking to intoxication, and 2) whether urgency influenced the effectiveness of naltrexone...

Heavy drinking among young adults is a serious public health problem. Naltrexone, an opioid antagonist, has been shown to reduce drinking in young adults compared to placebo and can be taken on a targeted (i.e., as needed) basis. Understanding risk factors for drinking and naltrexone effects within-person in young adults may help to optimize the us...

Objective: Tertiary Health Research Intervention via Email (THRIVE), a very brief, freely available, multicomponent Web-based alcohol intervention originally developed and tested among students in Australia and New Zealand, was tested in the United States. We also evaluated effects of systematically varying the protective behavioral strategies (PB...

Research using twins has found that much of the variability in externalizing phenotypes—including alcohol and drug use, impulsive personality traits, risky sex, and property crime—is explained by genetic factors. Nevertheless, identification of specific genes and variants associated with these traits has proven to be difficult, likely because indiv...

Background: While food addiction is well accepted in popular culture and mainstream media, its scientific validity as an addictive behavior is still under investigation. This study evaluated the reliability and validity of the Yale Food Addiction Scale and Modified Yale Food Addiction Scale using data from two community-based convenience samples....

Objective: Prior studies have demonstrated an association between high-risk sexual behavior and alcohol use, and there is emerging evidence that dating status and sexual behavior are related to risk for subsequent alcohol use. However, relatively little is known regarding the specific attitudinal or behavioral indicators of alcohol-related risk as...

Alcohol use generally peaks during the early 20s and declines with age. These declines, referred to as "maturing out," are presumed to result from the acquisition of adult roles (e.g., marriage, employment) incompatible with alcohol use. Recent empirical evidence suggests that variables other than role transitions (e.g., personality) may also be im...

Parallels in biological, psychological, and behavioral systems have led to the hypothesis that an addictive process may contribute to problematic eating. The Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) was developed to provide a validated measure of addictive-like eating behavior based upon the diagnostic criteria for substance dependence. Recently, the Diagn...

Objective: Behavioral interventions for young adults show limited effects 1-year posttreatment. Few studies have examined the longitudinal outcomes of pharmacotherapy trials to reduce heavy drinking. This study examined the posttreatment, longitudinal effects of the first placebo-controlled trial of naltrexone in young adult heavy drinkers. Metho...

Social experiences may moderate genetic influences on alcohol dependence (AD) symptoms. Consistent with this hypothesis, Park, Sher, Todorov, and Heath (2011) previously reported interactions between the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) and developmentally specific environments in the etiology of AD symptoms during emerging and young adulthood. Usi...

The acquired preparedness model (APM) posits that alcohol expectancies mediate effects of personality traits on drinking outcomes, whereas the dual process model (DPM) suggests that top-down behavioral control (e.g., self-control) moderates the impact of bottom-up risk factors such as alcohol expectancies. This study sought to integrate the APM and...

College students binge drink more frequently than the broader population, yet most individuals "mature out" of binge drinking. Impulsivity and sensation seeking traits are important for understanding who is at risk for maintaining binge drinking across college and the transition to adult roles. We use latent class growth analysis (LCGA) to examine...

Although limited in empirical support, Alcohol Expectancy (AE) theory posits that AEs may overestimate subjective response (SR) to the positive effects of alcohol, which, in turn, confers alcohol-related risk (e.g., Darkes & Goldman, 1993). The recent development of the Anticipated Effects of Alcohol Scale (AEAS; Morean, Corbin, & Treat, 2012) and...

Background Although drinking for tension reduction has long been posited as a risk factor for alcohol-related problems, studies investigating anxiety in relation to risk for alcohol problems have returned inconsistent results, leading researchers to search for potential moderators. Negative urgency (the tendency to become behaviorally dysregulated...

This project examines associations between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and two dimensions of impulsivity (sensation seeking and premeditation), and tests whether CSA-personality associations are moderated by the DRD4 exon III VNTR polymorphism. Sample 1 is from a longitudinal study of university students measured at 10 waves over ages 18-24 years...

Subjective response to alcohol (SR) has been shown to differ by gender, family history of alcoholism, drinking status, and cigarette smoking status. However, the requisite statistical basis for making mean-level comparisons (scalar measurement invariance; MI) has not been established for any SR measure, making it impossible to determine whether obs...

Differential sensitivity to alcohol effects (e.g., increased stimulation and decreased sedation) is associated with heavier use and problems. Although genetic factors contribute to alcohol response (AR), environmental factors may also play a role. This study examined effects of physical context on AR using a between subjects placebo-controlled desi...

Naltrexone, an opioid antagonist, may facilitate reduction in drinking among young adults. We compared the efficacy and safety of naltrexone administered daily plus targeted dosing with placebo to reduce drinking in young adults who engage in heavy drinking. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted in an outpatient researc...

Background There is consistent evidence that the binge drinking standard of 5+ drinks per drinking occasion for men (4+ for women) is associated with risk for negative consequences. Yet, many have questioned the adequacy of this measure as an index of intoxication (e.g., a blood alcohol concentration [BAC] of 0.08 g%). In response to these concerns...

Parental and peer drinking and attitudes have been identified as predictors of drinking during adolescence and the transition to college, but little is known about these influences during the transition out of college. The current study assessed the influence of parents and peers on drinking behavior in a large sample of college drinkers (N = 1,665...

Models of risk-taking typically assume that the variability of outcomes is important in the likelihood of making a risky choice. In an animal model of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), within-session variability, or the coefficient of variability (CV), was found to be a novel predictor of behavior (Jentsch et al., 2010). Human studies have not...

Three decades of research demonstrate that individual differences in subjective response (SR) to acute alcohol effects predict heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems. However, the SR patterns conferring the greatest risk remain under debate. Morean and Corbin (2010) highlighted that extant SR measures commonly have limitations within the follo...

Excess weight is a major threat to public health. An addiction-like tendency toward certain foods may contribute to overeating. We aimed to describe the prevalence and associated characteristics in relation to a food-addiction scale in middle-aged and older women. We examined the prevalence and associated characteristics of a food-addiction scale m...

Objective: Previous research has identified several aspects of behavioral undercontrol that are associated with heavy drinking and problems. Further, research on the acquired preparedness model (Smith and Anderson, 2001) has identified biased learning as a potential mechanism of these effects. Traits like sensation seeking have been linked to stro...

Reports an error in "Drinking Less and Drinking Smarter: Direct and Indirect Protective Strategies in Young Adults" by Kelly S. DeMartini, Rebekka S. Palmer, Robert F. Leeman, William R. Corbin, Benjamin A. Toll, Lisa M. Fucito and Stephanie S. O'Malley (Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Advanced Online Publication, Oct 22, 2012, np). There were e...

We developed an alcohol self-administration paradigm to model individual differences in impaired control. The paradigm includes moderate drinking guidelines meant to model limits on alcohol consumption, which are typically exceeded by people with impaired control. Possible payment reductions provided a disincentive for excessive drinking. Alcohol u...

Prior research has identified group-level differences in subjective response (SR) to alcohol by gender, family history of alcoholism, cigarette smoking status, and drinking status (e.g., King et al., 2011; McKee et al., 2008; Quinn & Fromme, 2011). However, the statistical basis needed to make these types of group-level comparisons (i.e., measureme...

We tested predictors of interest in a clinical trial of naltrexone plus counseling for heavy drinking reduction in young adults using a web survey. Respondents could indicate interest in the clinical trial at the conclusion of the survey. A random sample of university students completed the survey (N = 584, 60% female). Data were collected in Octob...

Three decades of research demonstrate that individual differences in subjective response (SR) to acute alcohol effects predict heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems. However, the SR patterns conferring the greatest risk remain under debate. Morean and Corbin (2010) highlighted that extant SR measures commonly have limitations within the follo...

College men are more likely to engage in health-compromising behaviors, including risky drinking behavior, and experience more alcohol-related problems, including violence and arrest, compared with women. The study of masculine norms or societal expectations, defined as beliefs and values about what it means to be a man, is one promising area of in...

Background: Previous studies have demonstrated that a low subjective response (SR) to alcohol is a risk factor for alcohol use disorders (AUDs), and a recent study suggests that acquired tolerance can be differentiated from initial SR and is also significantly associated with drinking problems. Because the prior study of SR and tolerance focused o...

Although prominent models of alcohol use and abuse implicate stress as an important motivator of alcohol consumption, research has not consistently identified a relationship between stress and drinking outcomes. Presumably stress leads to heavier alcohol consumption and related problems primarily for individuals who lack other adaptive methods for...

Using alcohol at an early age is a well-documented risk factor for heavy drinking and the experience of a range of negative social and health consequences. However, it remains unclear if early consumption of any alcohol or early drinking to intoxication confers the greatest risk. Age of onset (AO) and delay to first intoxication (delay) were examin...

Efforts to increase the use of protective behavioral strategies are a common component in interventions for young adult drinking. Some strategies, including those utilized while drinking, are directly correlated with lower drinking levels (cf. Martens et al., 2005). Other strategies, however, may be indirectly related to drinking and instead be mor...

Chapter 38 discusses interactions between alcohol consumption, eating, and weight. This includes psychological risk factors implicated in excess food and alcohol consumption, neurobiological similarities, relations between alcohol and sugar consumption, and alcohol and weight gain.

Food and Addiction: A Comprehensive Handbook brings scientific order to the issue of food and addiction, spanning multiple disciplines to create the foundation for what is a rapidly advancing field and to highlight needed advances in science and public policy. It assembles leading scientists and policy makers from fields such as nutrition, addictio...

Alcohol expectancy (AEs) research has enhanced our understanding of how anticipated alcohol effects confer risk for heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems. However, extant AE measures have limitations within 1 or more of the following areas: assessing a comprehensive range of effects, specifying the hypothetical number of drinks consumed, asse...

Human laboratory studies have a long and rich history in the field of alcoholism. Human laboratory studies have allowed for advances in alcohol research in a variety of ways, including elucidating neurobehavioral mechanisms of risk, identifying phenotypically distinct subtypes of alcohol users, investigating the candidate genes underlying experimen...

Few studies have examined the co-occurrence of alcohol and marijuana use in clinical samples of young adults. The present study investigated whether co-occurring marijuana use is associated with characteristics indicative of a high level of risk in young adult heavy drinkers. Individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 years (N=122) participated in a...

According to the acquired preparedness model (APM), personality traits related to disinhibition (i.e., impulsivity and sensation seeking) may influence the learning process, contributing to individual differences in cognitions (e.g., expectations about outcomes) that may contribute to engagement in and consequences of risk behaviors, including alco...

Reports an error in "Mind over milkshakes: Mindsets, not just nutrients, determine ghrelin response" by Alia J. Crum, William R. Corbin, Kelly D. Brownell and Peter Salovey (Health Psychology, np). In the second paragraph on the first page, the Allison & Uhl 1964 citation is incorrect. The corrected sentence and full citation is provided in the err...