RESEARCHERS FIND THAT BEER GOGGLES ARE NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY A REAL THING, AT ALL
I always find it somewhat strange when I’m confronted with actual scientific research intersecting with cultural memes, folk tales, or traditional silliness. But when it comes to beer goggles, I suppose it is intersecting with all three. Beer goggles, if you care to remember, are what we call it when you get drunk enough that people you wouldn’t normally find attractive enough to have sex with suddenly are. In other words, enough alcohol in your blood could in theory make you willing to sleep with anyone at all. But because of some curious researchers, this idea that goes back forever doesn’t seem to be even slightly real.
Read More: Numbers Show National Cinema Day Was A Real Hit
BEER GOGGLES STUDY ENLISTED 18 PAIRS OF DRINKING BUDDIES TO GET TO THE RUB
The study, of course, focused on men and whether or not their perception of a woman’s attractiveness changed in proportion, or at all, to the amount of alcohol they drank. The study enlisted the help of 18 pairs of male friends in their 20’s to be research subjects. In other words, each pair were (and presumably still are) regular drinking buddies, with the idea to mimic their normal social aspect of drinking alcohol. To create a baseline for the “beer goggles” potential effect, they were put into two groups; one with a cranberry juice cocktail with alcohol and one without.
Related:
MEN NEVER ACTUALLY WEAR BEER GOGGLES, THOUGH THEY DO SEEM TO GET BRAVER AND MORE CONFIDENT
Halfway through the first day, they then had to rate the attractiveness of women in photographs or videos. The hook was that they were also told that they could potentially spend time with some of the women they viewed in a future study. And the bar of their drunkenness was on the day their group consumed alcohol, they drank enough to reach the legal limit, or .08% blood alcohol concentration. And the findings are really interesting. Specifically, men don’t ever achieve the state of wearing beer goggles. They don’t, at all, find women more attractive when drunk. But they do achieve more confidence in the idea of approaching really beautiful women to, ahem, socialize.
So beer goggles are a total myth, and not even an urban legend anymore! We simply have to add a word, beer goggles bravery. Maybe these researchers look next at measuring the reality of coyote ugly? You can read more about the findings, published Tuesday in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
