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The present study examines the relationship of familial and personality risk factors for alcoholism to individual differences in sensitivity to the positively and negatively reinforcing properties of alcohol. Sixteen sons of male alcoholics with multigenerational family histories of alcoholism (MFH) and 11 men who self‐report heightened sensitivity to anxiety (HAS) were compared with 13 age‐matched family history negative, low anxiety sensitive men (FH‐LAS) on sober and alcohol‐intoxicated response patterns. We were interested in the effects of alcohol on specific psychophysiological indices of “stimulus reactivity,” anxiety, and incentive reward. Alcohol significantly dampened heart rate reactivity to aversive stimulation for the MFH and HAS men equally, yet did not for the FH‐LAS group. HAS men evidenced idiosyncrasies with respect to alcohol‐induced changes in electrodermal reactivity to avenive stimulation (an …