Date of Award

2025-12-01

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Psychology

Advisor(s)

Craig A. Field

Abstract

Alcohol use disorders is one of the major burdens of disease, yet it remains one of the disorders with the lowest treatment prevalence. For individuals who seek treatment for their alcohol use disorder, they may experience higher levels of social disintegration, guilt, shame, and stigmatization. Stigma is a multistep process that makes way for stereotypes, prejudice, and acts of discrimination to take place. With labels such as “alcoholic” implying negative connotation and being frequently used, the fear of being stigmatized and negatively labeled often results in delayed or entirely avoided care. Research has turned to the use of implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to assess an individual’s unconscious and uncontrollable associations. The IAT measures response latency such that stronger associations are easier to pair resulting in faster response times and fewer errors made. The current study developed and psychometrically assessed an IAT to assess alcohol use disorder to implicit attribute bias. Participants (N =184, 50.5% female) completed a developed IAT categorizing target categories (i.e., alcoholic versus non-alcoholic) and value categories (good versus bad) followed by explicit measures of stigma. The IAT D-score was calculated and used to assess construct validity. Pearson correlations were also used to assess convergent and predictive validity. Results indicated strong and significantly positive IAT D-scores, indicative of negative implicit bias toward people with alcohol use disorder. Pearson correlations indicated that only Enthusiasm, a subscale of the Allophilia measure, was negatively and significantly correlated with IAT. Results of regression analyses in which the IAT predicted social distance preference were not statistically significant. Multinomial modeling using the Quadruple Processing model (Quad model) was applied to the error rates of the IAT indicating that the overcoming of bias (OB), detection (D), and guessing (G) played an important role in responding to IAT stimuli. Further, the Quad model results indicated that the activation of biased association and cognitive control did not predict the relationships between social distance and internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice, respectively. Lastly, exploratory analyses indicated that based on the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test, only those in the abstaining to low-risk ranges had a negative implicit bias toward those with alcohol use disorder, not in line with previous research suggesting that those who engage in at-risk drinking tend to also engage in “othering” or have more stigmatizing attitudes towards those with alcohol use disorder. Future research may apply the knowledge that has been gained from the current study to assess the associations between public stigma and individuals with alcohol use disorder who are seeking treatment and how interventions such as perspective-taking can decrease stigma from healthcare providers.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

90 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Erin Marie Portillo

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Included in

Psychology Commons

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