Desire Thinking across the Continuum of Drinking Behavior.

Objective: Desire thinking is a voluntary cognitive process involving verbal and imaginary elaboration of a desired target. Recent research has highlighted the role of desire thinking in predicting addictive behaviours independent of other psychological constructs including negative affect and craving. The goal of this research project was to explore the role of desire thinking across the continuum of drinking behaviour. Methods: A sample of alcohol-dependent drinkers (n = 43), problem drinkers (n = 59), and social drinkers (n = 68) completed self-report instruments of desire thinking, negative affect, craving and drinking behaviour. Results: Analyses revealed that alcohol-dependent drinkers and problem drinkers scored higher than social drinkers on imaginal prefiguration, and that alcohol-dependent drinkers scored higher than problem drinkers who in turn scored higher than social drinkers on verbal perseveration. A multi-group discriminant analysis showed that craving, imaginal prefiguration and verbal perseveration loaded on a first function whilst age loaded on a second function. The variables correctly classified 75.9% of cases. Conclusions: The findings suggest that desire thinking may be a risk factor across the continuum of drinking behaviour and that treatment may benefit from specifically targeting this cognitive process

Temperament and parental styles as predictors of ruminative brooding and worry

The objective of this study was to investigate the relative contribution of temperament and parental styles in predicting ruminative brooding and worry whilst controlling for negative affect. A community sample (n=307) was administered six self-report instruments that assessed anxiety, depression, temperament, parental styles, ruminative brooding and worry. Results showed that both ruminative brooding and worry were positively correlated with anxiety, depression, harm avoidance and parental overprotection. In addition, ruminative brooding was positively correlated with reward dependence, and worry with novelty seeking. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that anxiety, depression, reward dependence and parental overprotection were significant predictors of ruminative brooding, and that anxiety, depression, harm avoidance and parental overprotection were significant predictors of worry. These findings show that a temperament characterized by high levels of harm avoidance or high levels of reward dependence may facilitate the tendency to use worry or ruminative brooding respectively, and that a parental style characterized by high control and protectiveness is an independent risk factor for the development of both types of recurrent negative thinking