Some Dimensions of Affective Response to Drugs

Abstract

This study is an attempt to dimensionalize the affective responses of normal humans to some common psychoactive drugs. To this end, the methods of factor analysis were applied to a drug X mood correlation matrix. This technique differs radically from previous applications of factor analysis to mood effects, in that the latter characteristically analyze a mood X subject matrix. Thus, instead of reflecting the organization of individual differences, the resulting factor structure represented a mood-dimension space in which drug effects were resolved as vectors. Amphetamines were found to produce strong effects along three mood dimensions, whose relative strengths depend upon dosage, latency, and a strong dosage X latency interaction. Susceptibility to independent manipulation by dosage-latency variations implies that the three dimensions constitute more than statistical abstractions and may represent isolable biochemical events.