Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Beer Goggles





We’ve all talked about it, and we all joke about it, but is there really an entity called the “beer-goggle” effect?

The issue has come up again recently in the news. It is based on a study performed by Barry T. Jones from the Department of Psychology and his colleagues at the University of Glasgow.

In this study, they tested 40 male and 40 female university undergraduates who they found on campus premises. Half of the volunteers had been drinking and half were sober. They were not told the exact truth about what exactly they were measuring so not to bias the answers. The volunteers were told that they were doing market research to help identify different types of student faces. During the study, a few were disqualified because they were either gay, they recognized some of the photos, or they had figured out what the study was really trying to measure.

The volunteers were shown 118 faces (half male, half female) via a laptop computer.

They were than asked to rate the distinctiveness of opposite- and same-sex faces – with questions like how big was the nose, how sparkling were the eyes etc. The results of this part of the study did not show much difference between the volunteers regardless of whether they were completely sober or if they had been drinking.

Next, they asked the volunteers to rate the attractiveness of 114 wrist watches. Here the results did begin to show a slight tendency for the ones drinking to rate the watches as more attractive.

Finally, the volunteers were asked to rate the attractiveness of the opposite sex faces. In this part of the study, it was found that both men and women who had been drinking rated the opposite sex more attractive about 25% more often than those volunteers who were sober.

Currently, it is believed that alcohol acts on an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This nucleus is thought to play an important role in reward, pleasure, and addiction. Although the nucleus accumbens has traditionally been studied for its role in addiction, it plays an equal role in processing many rewards such as food, sex, and video games. A recent study found that it is involved in the regulation of emotions induced by music. It evidently is a very powerful reward center that can be triggered by alcohol which in turn can lead to loss of inhibitions and risky behaviors.

So the current advice is that when you visit the bar, hangout, meat-market or wherever, scope out your potential targets before you put on your beer goggles.

I believe there is a country song about this exact phenomenon.

I wonder if our frineds over at NAC would want to sponser our own Sounthern Indiana clinical trial

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There must be a direct correlation between beer goggles and HPV.

6/07/2006 08:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Careful Doc. you are treading on New Albanian's water (or beer) now. LOL

6/07/2006 11:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am sure the New Albanian would agree that the study is accurate.

To medrep: that would definately be the song.

6/08/2006 08:24:00 AM  
Blogger The New Albanian said...

I resemble these remarks ...

6/08/2006 11:10:00 AM  

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