Beer Googles Work!!!

Guess what?! I am blind. Well, not legally blind – but I sure as hell cannot see for the life of me. And each year, my vision seems to keep getting worse and worse. Although my glasses serve their purpose, I see best with contacts. Without either, I can see my hand clearly about 8 inches from my face – and lose vision with every inch after that.

THE BEER WENCH

So you can look at this in two ways: 1. People are more attractive to me because I cannot see clearly naturally … or 2. I am more critical of beauty because my vision is corrected beyond 20-20 and I am capable of noticing flaws that others may not.

Relax. I am not superficial. Unless you are food, wine and beer – I will not judge you based on your appearance. HONEST. AND even for all the aforementioned, it really is the inside that counts most. Looks can be deceiving, eh? The proof is in the “pudding,” whatever the pudding may be … right?

Hmmm blah blah, something about the eye of the beholder … yada yada yada.

This brings me to the subject of “Beer Googles.” After consuming alcohol, do people actually find others to be more attractive than they would if sober? British researchers say – YES!

Scientists at the University of Bristol found that study subjects who consumed alcohol considered people to be about 10 per cent more attractive than did people who did not consume alcohol or have overcome alcoholism.

The researchers asked 84 subjects to drink a lime-flavored beverage that either contained alcohol or did not. [Damn, I feel bad for the people in the control group. Placebo = LAME.)

The amount of alcohol equaled a large glass of wine or one-and-a-half pints of beer.

About 15 minutes after consuming their drinks, the subjects looked at pictures of men and women on a computer screen and rated how attractive they found each person.

Both the male and female subjects not only found members of the opposite sex more attractive, they also found members of the same gender more attractive, too.

The researchers also found that men deemed women to be more attractive for up to 24 hours after they consumed alcohol. (Yeah, yeah)

___________________________________________________________________

The findings are published in the online edition of Alcohol and Alcoholism.

Abstract:

Effects of acute alcohol consumption on ratings of attractiveness of facial stimuli: Evidence of long-term encoding

Lycia L. C. Parker, Ian S. Penton-Voak, Angela S. Attwood and Marcus R. Munafò

Aim: 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.

Methods: We investigated male and female participants (n = 84), using male and female facial stimuli, in order to investigate possible sex differences, and whether any effects of alcohol are selective for opposite-sex facial stimuli. We tested participants immediately following consumption of alcohol or placebo and one day later, in order to investigate whether any effects of alcohol persist beyond acute effects.

Results: Attractiveness ratings were higher in the alcohol compared to the placebo group (F[1, 80] = 4.35, P = 0.040), but there was no evidence that this differed between males and females or was selective for opposite-sex faces. We did not observe marked effects of alcohol on self-reported measures of mood, suggesting that the effects on ratings of attractiveness were not due simply to global hedonic effects or reporting biases.

Conclusions: Alcohol consumption increases ratings of attractiveness of facial stimuli, and this effect is not selective for opposite-sex faces. In addition, the effects of alcohol consumption on ratings of attractiveness persist for up to 24 h after consumption, but only in male participants when rating female (i.e. opposite-sex) faces.