Implicit death primes increase alcohol consumption.

Objective: The authors examined whether priming thoughts of death are associated with increases in alcohol consumption.
Method: Research assistants handed out fliers that were stacked in a random order to pedestrians walking through campus (N = 377). These fliers served to remind them of either their death or of an aversive condition unrelated to death (severe back pain), which served as the control. Then they were solicited to purchase an alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverage.
Results: The authors used a 2 × 2 log-linear analysis, with type of prime (death-pain) and beverage type (alcoholic-nonalcoholic) as the independent variables and consumption (yes-no) as the outcome measure (11.9% of the total sample consumed a beverage). RESULTS revealed that a greater percentage of students who received the death prime consumed alcohol (36.59%) versus students in the pain prime condition (8.94%), G²(4, N = 377) = 64.8, p < .001, W = .41. The type of prime (death-pain) did not influence the consumption of nonalcoholic beverages.
Conclusion: The current research indicates that death-related concerns may play a role in increasing the consumption of alcoholic beverages.