Self-Deception, Self-Esteem, and Control over Drinking at Different Stages of Alcohol Involvement

Abstract

With two studies, the authors sought to clarify how alcoholism relates to beliefs about drinking control and self-esteem by varying the stage of alcohol involvement. The stages were active abuser, commitment to change, early recovery, and late recovery. As hypothesized inStudy 1, long-term recovering abstainers had greater drinking-related internal locus of control, self-efficacy about abstaining, and self-esteem than those in detoxification. Unexpectedly, active abusers did not differ from the long-term recovering abstainers. Study 2 successfully discriminated these extreme groups with a measure of self-deception. Active abusers' positive beliefs about drinking control and self-esteem were associated with high self-deception. Self-beliefs at commitment to change were negative, but self-deception was still high. Early and late recovery was associated with positive self-beliefs and significantly lower self-deception.