‘Beer Goggles’ is just a myth, concludes study.
By Raif Karerat
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A study published in the U.K. suggests that the notion of “beer goggles” — the idea that drinking alcohol causes people to perceive others as more attractive, is a myth.
The newly released study tested the beer goggle effect in a real-world setting, not in a laboratory.
For the study — published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism — psychologist Olivia Maynard and her colleagues at the University of Bristol recruited 311 volunteers in three Bristol pubs on two consecutive weekends.
Each participant was asked to estimate his or her perceived level of intoxication, but was also given a breath alcohol test so the researchers would have an accurate measurement of the amount of alcohol consumed.
The participants were then asked to look at the photographed faces of 20 men and 20 women with a mean age of 21 and rate each one for attractiveness on a 7-point scale, ranging from “very unattractive†to “very attractive.â€
An analysis of the results indicated there was absolutely no correlation between how much alcohol the participants had imbibed and how attractive they found the individuals in the photos.
Oddly, there was evidence of a negative relationship between breath alcohol levels and the attractiveness scores of same-sex faces, particularly among men.
“An important difference between these laboratory experiments and the present naturalistic study,†wrote Maynard and her co-authors, “is the self-administration of alcohol here, as compared with random allocation to alcohol or placebo conditions in laboratory experiments.â€
However, subjects in the laboratory experiments tended to consume more alcohol than those in the pubs during past research.
“It is possible that alcohol may only affect perception of attractiveness at a higher level of alcohol consumptions, which was not observable with the naturalistic design used here,†stated the researchers.