Exploring the relationship between hangover, interoceptive awareness and emotion regulation

Based on previous research, there is a positive association between hangover severity and hangover frequency (Rîșnițǎ et al., 2025) and hangover severity and increased subjective intoxication (Verster et al., 2020). A recent systematic review (Rothman et al., 2025) suggested that there is a strong association between hangover frequency and negative affect, indicating that frequent hangovers may be associated with potential difficulties in managing negative emotions, highlighting a potential relationship between hangover frequency with emotion regulation. Research by Gunn et al. (2020) suggests that hangover severity significantly affects emotion regulation and subjective mood, with implications for understanding the challenges of emotional control following alcohol consumption. Additionally, attentional control predicts hangover severity and related impairments in daily activities, particularly multitasking (Hudson & Gunn, 2023), while greater mental resilience is associated with less severe hangovers and reduced risking drinking behaviours (Terpstra et al., 2022). Interoception, the ability to perceive and interpret body signals, has been suggested to be a key factor in alcohol use disorder, where interoceptive dysfunction may promote increased alcohol consumption (Craig, 2002; Wiśniewski et al., 2021). Lower interoceptive awareness has been implicated in displaying more difficulties in minimising the impact of emotions from negative experiences in daily life (Zamariola et al., 2019) which may be extrapolated to hangovers which has negative effects of low mood, increased emotional symptoms and anxiety (McKinney & Coyle, 2005). Moreover, there is a lack of research on the relationships between hangovers and interoceptive awareness, overall highlighting the need to explore the relationships between hangover frequency, hangover severity, emotion regulation, and interoceptive awareness, whilst controlling for overall alcohol consumption. This project will aim to investigate if interoception mediates alcohol consumption and hangover severity and frequency and if in turn impacts mental resilience, emotion regulation and attentional control.