Surfing the Urge: Experiential Acceptance Moderates the Relation between Automatic Alcohol Motivation and Hazardous Drinking

There is growing evidence for the role of automatic mental processes in substance use. Recent research suggests that mindfulness training may be a useful treatment for substance use disorders and theoretical analyses suggest mindfulness works by decoupling the relation between automatic appetitive responses and actual behavior. The current study was designed to examine whether mindfulness moderates the relation between automatic processes and alcohol behavior. A sample of undergraduate drinkers (N = 50) completed measures of hazardous drinking, mindfulness and automatic alcohol motivation (using the Implicit Association Test; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Regression analyses indicate that greater mindful acceptance of current experience weakens the positive relation between automatic alcohol–approach associations and hazardous drinking found in other research (Palfai & Ostafin, 2003). The results contribute to basic science by indicating that the relation between automatic mental processes and behavior may be moderated by mindfulness and to clinical science by suggesting how mindfulness might work in changing substance use behavior.