Next time you pull the old ‚beer goggles‘ excuse for a drunken hookup, you might need to think again, because researchers say they’re a myth.
Have you ever consented to a drunken hookup with someone you thought was super-attractive, only to regret locking lips with them the next morning?
Did you blame the party pash on being intoxicated? Well, you might need to refrain from using ‚beer goggles‘ as an excuse, because researchers have discovered that it’s actually not true at all.
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The study enlisted 18 pairs of men in their 20s to test the effect of „alcohol-induced mirage“, and found that the participants didn’t budge on how attractive they found people regardless of their state.
“Conventional wisdom would suggest that alcohol leads people to perceive others as more physically attractive,” Dr Molly Bowdring, study author and Stanford University professor, told The New York Post.
Alcohol did, however, give participants a confident spring in their step. The study participants consumed around three standard drinks in a little over 30 minutes, and what happened was that they were more likely to approach people they found attractive as a result.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to look at whether people choose to interact with more attractive people after drinking,” Dr Bowdring explained, who noted that previous studies have explored similar notions, but participants were drinking alone. This time, participants were seeing people in real, social situations.
“Because physical attractiveness plays a pretty key role in our social experiences, we wanted to better understand how does alcohol influence that.”
On the plus side, alcohol can positively “alter our social motivations” in the sense that it can give us a dose of Dutch courage, to take a leap of faith, something anxiety may stop us from doing in sober circumstances.
However, it can also lead us to higher-risk situations as our ability to judge potential danger is severely lessened, and, as many of us know, it can also lead us to regret things we may have said thanks to that extra dose of confidence.– not to mention the plethora of health considerations.
No one likes a moral hangover, so it’s always best to drink in moderation and remember to hydrate with some trusty water between each alcoholic bevvy. Your head and moral compass will thank you.