Beer Googles Is A Myth
Updated : Apr 20, 2009
The concept of 'beer goggles' which supposedly make men view women as more attractive after drinking alcohol is a myth, claim scientists.
A Leicester University study found that alcohol actually has the opposite effect and made men see women as less attractive.
Half the participants in the experiment had been drinking, with effects rated as "relaxed and benign", "blunted and disinhibited", "boisterous and over-expressive", and "unambiguously drunk".
Some of the pictures of 10 young women aged 17 were digitally altered to make them appear younger or older. Make-up was also applied digitally to a number of images.
The findings showed that alcohol reduced the ability of women to guess the age of the photo models, but not men.
Both the effects of alcohol and prettifying a face with make-up had little effect on men's judgment.
Dr Vincent Egan, from the University of Leicester, said: "This study suggests that alcohol consumption and make-up use do not interfere with how old we perceive someone to be.
"Another interesting finding was that overall participants who drank alcohol actually rated all the women in the photos as less attractive, compared to the participants who hadn't drunk alcohol. This seemingly flies in the face of the commonly held notion of 'beer goggles'."
Reporting their results in the British Journal of Psychology, the researchers wrote: "Although alcohol limited the processing of maturity cues in female observers, it had no effect on the age perceptions of males viewing female faces, suggesting male mate preferences are not easily disrupted."
VeryHappyPig wonders does this study apply to pigs too!
