William Atkins
Friday, 15 August 2008 20:51
Science -
Biology
Page 1 of 3
University of Bristol psychologists studied whether drinking alcohol increases a person’s perceived attractiveness of the opposite sex, as is often hypothesized (mostly in drinking establishments) in The Beer Goggle Effect. Do they work in both males and females?
The “beer goggle” effect is a slang term related to the lowering of one’s sexual inhibitions with respect to approaching and/or choosing sexual partners while drinking alcoholic beverages.
Scientifically, the so-called beer goggle effect is caused when alcohol stimulates the nucleus accumbens, the portion of the brain used analyze facial attractiveness along with determining such feelings and senses as laughter, pleasure, fear, and addiction.
The slang term is often specifically used when a drunken person chooses a sexual partner that he or she would not normally choose if he/she was sober.
Thus, the hypothetically worn “beer goggles” distort a drunken person’s view of the opposite sex—making a person of the opposite sex look more attractive, when in a drunken state, than they really are (when in a sober state).
The paper summarizing the results of the study is entitled “
Effects of acute alcohol consumption on ratings of attractiveness of facial stimuli: evidence of long-term encoding.” Its authors are Lycia L. C. Parker, Ian S. Penton-Voak, Angela S. Attwood, and Marcus R. Munafò, all of the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol (Bristol, United Kingdom).
The article was published online on August 6, 2008 in the journal
Alcohol and Alcoholism.
The authors state within their abstract,
“A strongly held popular belief is that alcohol increases the perceived attractiveness of members of the opposite sex. Despite this, there are no experimental data that investigate this possibility. We therefore explored the relationship between acute alcohol consumption and ratings of attractiveness of facial stimuli.”
The Bristol researchers studied 84 male and female heterosexual college students to investigate any effects of alcohol consumption on the selection of facial features with respect to the opposite sex.
They tested each participant fifteen minutes following the drinking of either alcohol (chilled lime-flavored drinks with vodka) or placebo (non-alcohol beverage, lime-flavored drinks without vodka)) and one day later (when sober). (One alcoholic drink was equivalent to one large glass of wine or one pint-and-a-half beer.)
At these two times, the participants were shown photographs of forty college students (not participating in the study and unknown to the subjects) from both sexes.
Page two shows the results of the study.
