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Background: Mobile health (mHealth) technology use may reduce alcohol use and related negative consequences; however, little is known about its efficacy without prompting from researchers or pay‐per‐use. This exploratory analysis assessed relationships between mHealth technology use frequency and alcohol‐use outcomes. Methods: Young adults who drink heavily (N = 97, Mage = 23, 51% male, 64% non‐Hispanic White, Mdrinks/week = 21) had the option to use three mHealth technologies (breathalyzer device/app, blood alcohol content estimator app, drink counting via text message) while drinking for 2 weeks. Relationships between alcohol‐related outcomes and any, multiple, and specific mHealth technology use across study days and drinking days were evaluated via bivariate correlations and multiple regressions. Results: Participants used one or more mHealth technologies on approximately 68% of drinking days (33% of field days), with multiple technologies used on 34% of drinking days. Bivariate correlations revealed that a higher percentage of study days with any mHealth technology use was related to higher mean weekly drinks. However, a higher percentage of drinking days with any mHealth technology use was related to lower mean weekly drinks, percent of heavy and high‐intensity drinking days, and negative consequences. There were several significant, inverse correlations between alcohol variables and using the mHealth technologies that provided personalized feedback. Multiple regression analyses (holding sex and baseline alcohol variables constant) indicated that a higher percentage of drinking days with any mHealth technology use was related to lower mean weekly drinks and lower percentage of heavy drinking days. Conclusions: Using mHealth technologies to moderate drinking without direct prompting from the research team or per‐use incentives was related to less overall alcohol use and heavy drinking. This indicates potential real‐world engagement with mHealth apps to assist with in‐the‐moment drinking. Normalizing mHealth technology use during drinking could help curb the public health crisis around harmful alcohol use in young adult populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Impaired control over alcohol is a hallmark of addiction relevant to young adults, but additional prospective findings are needed, particularly in samples reporting heavy drinking. Further, we lack understanding of how attempts and failed efforts to control drinking relate to each other in predicting outcomes. We hypothesized that attempted and failed control would prospectively predict outcomes, with endorsement of both being especially problematic. Method: We used data from young adults reporting heavy drinking who enrolled in laboratory alcohol self-administration studies (n = 109). Mixed-effects models were used to predict drinks per drinking day, heavy drinking, and negative consequences across baseline and 6- and 12-month follow-ups. Interactions by time and between attempted and failed control were tested. Results: Higher failed control was associated with steeper declines in consequences and heavy drinking over time compared with lower failed control. However, higher attempted or failed control was still associated with more consequences and alcohol use than lower impaired control at multiple time points. A significant interaction indicated that the combination of higher attempted and failed control was associated with the most drinks per drinking day. There was also a significant Attempted × Failed Control interaction for heavy drinking. Conclusions: These findings provide further evidence supporting impaired control over alcohol use as a risk factor among young adults. Those reporting both higher attempted and failed control drank the most per day. Either attempted or failed control was associated with negative consequences. Those reporting both higher attempted and failed control may be in greatest need of intensive intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The self-medication hypothesis (SMH) suggests that individuals consume alcohol to alleviate stressful emotions. Still, the underlying mechanisms between stress and heavy episodic drinking remain to be explored. Impaired control over drinking (IC) reflects a failure of self-regulation specific to the drinking context, with individuals exceeding self-prescribed limits. Parenting styles experienced during childhood have a lasting influence on the stress response, which may contribute to IC. Method: We examined the indirect influences of parenting styles (e.g., permissive, authoritarian, and authoritative) on heavy episodic drinking and alcohol-related problems through the mediating mechanisms of stress and IC. We fit a latent measurement model with 938 (473 men; 465 women) university students, utilizing bootstrap confidence intervals, in Mplus 8.0. Results: Higher levels of authoritative parenting (mother and father) were indirectly linked to fewer alcohol-related problems and less heavy episodic drinking through less stress and IC. Maternal permissiveness was indirectly linked to more alcohol-related problems and heavy episodic drinking through more stress and, in turn, more IC. Impaired control appeared to be a mediator for stress and alcohol-related problems. Conclusions: Maternal permissiveness contributes to the use of alcohol to alleviate stress. Thus, reducing stress may reduce problematic heavy drinking and alcohol problems among emerging adults with high IC who may also have experienced permissive parenting. Stress may exacerbate behavioral dysregulation of drinking within self-prescribed limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prevents human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) but not other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Men who have sex with men (MSM) who take PrEP tend to report reduced condom use, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms. For this study, MSM who take PrEP (i.e., PrEP experienced; n = 88) and MSM who do not (i.e., PrEP naïve; n = 113) completed an online study, including the condom purchase task (CoPT). The CoPT assesses decisions to purchase condoms across escalating prices (range: free–$55) for sex with different types of hypothetical partners: those least likely to have an STD (least STD) and those that participants most want to have sex with (most want sex with). When condoms were free, PrEP‐experienced MSM had a lower rate of condom purchasing than did PrEP‐naïve MSM. For both partner types, PrEP‐experienced MSM reached a price break point (i.e., would not buy condoms) at a lower price than did PrEP‐naïve pariticipants. For the most‐want‐sex‐with partner at the price at which participants elected not to buy condoms, only 23% of PrEP‐experienced MSM chose to abstain from sex when not purchasing condoms versus 53% among PrEP‐naïve MSM. Similar patterns were observed for the least‐STD partner. The results support the potential utility of the CoPT in identifying behavioral mechanisms related to condom use and PrEP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To test differential outcomes between three 6‐month text‐messaging interventions to reduce at‐risk drinking in help‐seeking adults. Design: A three‐arm single‐blind randomized controlled trial with 1‐, 3‐, 6‐ and 12‐month follow‐ups. Setting: United States. A fully remote trial without human contact, with participants recruited primarily via social media outlets. Participants: Seven hundred and twenty‐three adults (mean = 39.9 years, standard deviation = 10.0; 62.5% female) seeking to reduce their drinking were allocated to 6 months of baseline 'tailored statically' messaging (TS; n = 240), 'tailored adaptive' messaging (TA; n = 239) or 'drink tracking' messaging (DT; n = 244). Interventions: TS consisted of daily text messages to reduce harmful drinking that were tailored to demographics and alcohol use. TA consisted of daily, tailored text messages that were also adapted based on goal achievement and proactive prompts. DT consisted of a weekly assessment for self‐reported drinking over the past 7 days. Measurements The primary outcome measure was weekly sum of standard drinks (SSD) at 6‐month follow‐up. Secondary outcome measures included drinks per drinking day (DDD), number of drinking days (NDD) per week and heavy drinking days (HDD) at 1‐, 3‐, 6‐ and 12‐month follow‐ups. Findings At 6 months, compared with DT, TA resulted in significant SSD reductions of 16.2 (from 28.7 to 12.5) drinks [adjusted risk ratio (aRR) = 0.80, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.71, 0.91] using intent‐to‐treat analysis. TA also resulted in significant improvements in DDD (aRR = 0.84; 95% CI = 0.77–0.92) and drinking days per week (b = −0.39; 95% CI = −0.67, –0.10), but not HDD compared with DT at 6 months. TA was not significantly different from TS at any time‐point, except DDD at 6 months. All groups made improvements in SSD at 12‐month follow‐up compared with baseline with an average reduction of 12.9 drinks per week across groups. Conclusions: Automated tailored mobile messaging interventions are scalable solutions that can reduce weekly alcohol consumption in remote help‐seeking drinkers over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to a recently prominent account of moral judgment, genuine moral disapprobation is a product of two convergent vectors of normative influence: a strong negative affect that arises from the mere consideration of a given piece of human conduct and a (socially acquired) belief that this conduct is wrong (Nichols, 2002). The existing evidence in favor of this "norms with feelings" proposal is rather mixed, with no obvious route to an empirical resolution. To help shed further light on the situation, we test a previously unexamined prediction that this account logically yields in a novel dilemmatic context: when individuals are faced with a moral dilemma that pits two or more "affectively-charged" moral norms against each other, the norm underwritten by the strongest feeling ought to determine the content of dilemmatic resolution. Across three studies, we find evidence that directly challenges this prediction, offering support for a Kolhberg-style "rationalist" alternative instead. More specifically, we find that it is not the participants' degree of norm-congruent emotion (whether situationally or dispositionally assessed) or its correlates, but rather their appraisal of the relative costs associated with various alternative courses of action that appears to be most predictive of how they resolve the experimentally induced moral conflict. We conclude by situating our studies within an overarching typology of moral encounters, which, we believe, can help guide future research as well as shed light on some current controversies within this literature. (Contains 4 tables.)

In this paper, we offer an overview and a critique of the existing theories of the moral-conventional distinction, with emphasis on Nichols's [Nichols, S. (2002). Norms with feeling: Towards a psychological account of moral judgment. "Cognition, 84", 221-236] neo-sentimentalist approach. After discussing some distinctive features of Nichols's (2002) thesis and situating it within the context of his predecessors' work [Blair, R. (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: Investigating the psychopath. "Cognition, 57", 1-29; Turiel, E. (1983). "The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], we review a number of arguments and findings within the developmental literature that, collectively, pose a serious challenge to the proposition that emotion is indispensable for or plays a substantial contributory role in the construction of the moral domain. Furthermore, we report two studies whose results contravene those of Nichols's (2002) Experiments 1 and 2 (the empirical basis for his "norms with feelings" hypothesis), while favoring a version of Turiel's (1983) harm-based approach instead. (Contains 2 tables.)