Are Alcohol Expectancies Associations, Propositions, or Elephants? A Reply to Wiers and Stacy (2010)

We provide a response to a commentary by Wiers and Stacy (2010) on our model of the alcohol-behavior link (Moss & Albery, 2009). Whereas Wiers and Stacy generally supported our model, they took issue with our conceptualization of the alcohol expectancy construct. We address the major concerns of Wiers and Stacy by demonstrating that our own view is consistent with basic cognitive scientific conceptualizations of the nature of associative and propositional reasoning within a dual-systems framework. In clarifying these issues, we maintain that although the predictions presented by Wiers and Stacy are important and useful in this area, they are predictions that can be derived from our original formulation of the alcohol-behavior link. We conclude that this kind of useful debate can only aid the generation of conceptually consistent and testable models that will advance the understanding of the alcohol-behavior link.