The Influence of Alcohol Consumption on Human Behavior - How Alcohol Affect Critical Thinking

Running Head: ALCOHOL VERSUS CRITICAL THINKING

The Influence of Alcohol Consumption on Human Behavior:

How Alcohol Affect Critical Thinking

The Influence of Alcohol Consumption on Critical Thinking:

How Alcohol Affect Human's Perception

Introduction

Critical thinking is our ability to apply the law of logic on our everyday decision making processes based on the information and evidences that we have (Furedy & Furedy, 1985). Previous studies showed the strong relationship between alcohol and negative behaviors such as violent (Ensor and godfrey 1993), reduced self- control (Abrams and Wilson 1983), sexual aggression (Seto and Barbaee 1995), risky sexual behavior (Testa and Collins 1997) and dangerous driving patterns (Donovan and Marlatt 1982). Notice that all of these behaviors are the results from the lack or even absence of human critical thinking. The relationship between alcohol consumption and its effect on critical thinking is varies for each individual. In their research on the cognitive effects of alcohol abuse, Christine M. Williams and Adrian E. G. Skinner (1990) found that alcohol has greater effect for the individuals that have a lower verbal intelligence. Many experiments and researches were designed to test the hypothesis for the effect of alcohol on cognitive abilities by recording and imaging the activities of the brain. Alcohol impairs many processes mediated by the prefrontal cortex of the brain (Lyvers, 2000). Once alcohol is consumed, our perception is likely to receive more negative than positive information about others (Peters & Czapinski, 1990; Ybarra 2002); ruminations and worries increase (Lisman, Kean and Noel 1983); and the time required to process behavioral information also increases (Rugg & Coles, 1995). Using two studies, one correlational design and one experimental design, my hypothesis being tested here is that alcohol consumption would decrease human ability to think critically.

Non- Experimental/ Correlational Design

In this research, I hypothesize that the amount of alcohol consumed has a strong impact to the lack of ability to think critically in our everyday decision making processes. A strong positive correlation relationship between the variables, meaning that higher scores on one variable are associated with higher scores on the other variable, is predicted as the result of this research. The first variable is the amount of alcohol one consumed ranking from 1 to 8 beers. The other variable is the lack of critical thinking which is expressed by one's behavior and action after he/she consumed alcohol such as the use of impropriate language, the tendency to use violence to solve their problem and the willingness to take risk.

A systematic research of the population records in Canada will be conducted to find the population in each province, population of male and female and the population of different ages in our society. Those data will be used to find the representative sample which reflects these characteristics of the population for this research. After that process of random sampling, using the Yellow Page to find phone numbers, one will be contacted and asked to participate for this research for $10. If they are interested in participating in this research, a few questions about their medical history, general health, their alcohol consumption's frequency and other general information about them will be asked on the phone. Fifty healthy social drinkers (those who drink but are not drinking addicted) with ages from 21 to 45 years old will be chosen as participants for this research. Each participant is also asked to find at least one partner who is the person that he/she often drinks with such as family member or best friend to participate in this research. The ethical issue in this research is that the participant may lose their personal privacy. So an informed consent form which states the procedures of the research, that the question being asked can be very personal, and that the participants are free to withdraw from the research anytime they feel uncomfortable with the question being asked will be given to the participant before he/she participates in the research. Also, the data results collected will be keep in private to public.

This research consists of two surveys. The first one which is for the participants includes questions about their own action, behavior and feeling after they consumed alcohol. The questions will be on several topics, such as violence, reduced self-control, sexual risky taking, and risky driving patterns. There will be 8 sections with the same set of questions, each section represents for the number of drink the participant has consumed (1 to 8 beers). The participant is asked to response to each question with an answer ranking from 0 to 7 in which 0 is as if he/she never does it and 7 is as if he/she does it every time after that specific amount of drink (depend on which section the participant is in). The second survey is for the participant's partner(s). The way this survey is set up is identical to the first one, except questions are about the participant's illogically actions and behaviors that can be observed by the person who he/she drank with. Each participant will be provided an account on my website so they can log on and do the survey online. The average score, which is equal to the sum of the scores of all questions answered, divided by the number of the questions answered, of one section will represent the score for the lack of critical thinking for that section. Plot the scores on a scatterplot which has variable X as the number of alcohol consumed (the section number) and variable Y as the score of the lack of critical thinking of that section, the best- fit line is predicted to have a positive slope.

If result is like predicted, then a few possible inferences could be drawn: alcohol may have a strong negative impact on human critical thinking and that the more alcohol we consume, the more likely we will lose our ability to think critically. The words "may" and "likely" above indicate that the inferences that we can make from this study are not causal inferences. It is possible that there are other variables such as the negative environment where the participants drank at (bar that has a lot of fighting), their bad smooth while they were drinking (feeling bad because they just lose their job) or peer pressure (a bet to street racing with their