Decision Making and Alcohol: Health Policy Implications

Many negative outcomes associated with alcohol consumption stem from individual decision making, such as the decision whether or not to drive after drinking. Understanding biases in decision making as they relate to alcohol, and measuring variability in decision strategies across individuals, can be a tool for improving policy. For alcohol-related policy, both addiction and the acute effects of intoxication are potential sources of bias or heterogeneity in decision strategy, and we provide a brief primer on how they can affect decision making. We then discuss two alcohol policy domains, alcohol impaired driving and excessive consumption. We review potential implications of major findings in decision-making research for each of these domains, and point out how policy could take account of biases and variability in decision making.