After consuming alcohol, people tend to find others and themselves more attractive. However, do people also find themselves more attractive after drinking fake alcohol?
Some scientists tricked a group of people into taste testing fake alcohol and discovered that the participants found themselves to be more attractive afterwards. Lu and Tirth discuss this intoxicating study on S01E04 of the Recreational Science podcast (timecode 21:18):
Tirth: The study is called, “Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder: people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive.”
Lu: People who think they’re drunk, not drunk people, but people who think they’re drunk also think they’re attractive?
Tirth: Right. This is published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2012.
Lu: Amazing journal. One of my favorites.
Tirth: So, there’s this popular conception that people who are drunk or buzzed get beer goggles on, which means that they start seeing a lot of people around them as more attractive than they are.
Lu: Mhm.
Tirth: The experimenters asked a companion question to this: namely, if people are drunk, do they think that they themselves are more attractive? This is the question asked by the first experiment, which is relatively simple. In this experiment, people at a bar had their blood alcohol level measured and were asked to rate themselves on attractiveness.
Lu: Oh the experiment actually took place in a bar? The experimenters didn’t build a bar in a lab. They actually went to a bar.
Tirth: Yeah, it was a field study.
Lu: Oh, field study. So not under controlled environments.
Tirth: No, no. The second experiment was much more controlled. Here, the experimenters asked whether people who are tricked into thinking they are drunk think themselves as more attractive. In this experiment they posed as a food advertising agency and put out an ad in the paper recruiting people, saying, “Hey, we want you to come over and taste this new non-alcoholic beverage and compare it to the alcoholic beverage and see which one you like better.”
Lu: Okay, I like this. See, this is the thing with psychology that I had mentioned before. There’s always an element of trickery. Love it. Beautiful.
Tirth: I know, exactly. So, the recruited subjects were split into two groups. The entire first group got alcohol. But, half of the people in that group were actually told, “You’re not getting alcohol.” The second group did not get alcohol at all. They were getting a beverage that tasted like alcohol. And within this second group, half of the people were told, “Hey, you’re actually getting booze.” The other half were told, “You’re getting the non-alcoholic beverage.”
Lu: Okay. So, four groups total. One group got alcohol, told they were getting alcohol. One group got alcohol, told they were not getting alcohol. One group got fake alcohol, but told they were getting real alcohol. One group who got fake alcohol, but were told they were getting non-alcoholic drinks.
Tirth: That’s correct.
Lu: Beautiful.
Tirth: Then the experimenters said, “Hey, listen, as part of this study, we want you to film an ad for this food company.” So, they filmed them. And then they said, “Hey, watch yourself on film and rate yourself as to how attractive you think you are.”
Lu: Oh, I love it.
Tirth: But it doesn’t stop here, man. It doesn’t stop here. This is so freaking cool. They then had an independent panel of judges who were not told ahead of time anything about who got alcohol and who didn’t. And they said, “Here’s a bunch of videos of people and in your best judgment, you can decide who’s drunk and who’s not drunk, and then rate their attractiveness.”
Lu: Oh, okay. Very good.
Tirth: So, one of the limitations of the second experiment is that people can usually sus out if the drink they’re drinking is alcoholic or not, because it tastes different and the smell might be different. So, they sprayed the rim of the non-alcoholic drink with alcohol so that they would smell it.
Lu: That’s very clever. Psychologists are the best scientists. I’m going to say that right now on the record.
Tirth: They thought of everything, man. And for the subjects who are getting alcohol but were told they were not getting alcohol, they were told, “Oh, the drink is so good, it tastes like alcohol, but there’s no alcohol in it.” So, that’s the setup here. You want to dive into the results?
Lu: Please. I’m dying to hear the results.
Tirth: Okay. So perhaps not surprisingly, in the first experiment where the experimenters went to a bar, they basically found that higher the blood alcohol level, the more attractive participants thought they were. The data analysis was a simple linear correlation where they looked at blood alcohol level and self-reported attractiveness. And often we use something called R to measure correlation. R was 0.56 here, which is actually a fairly strong correlation. So, 1 would be perfect correlation, 0 would be no correlation, meaning the two things you’re measuring are random. 0.5 is somewhere in between. So, 0.56 in a dirty experiment like this is actually pretty good.
Lu: Quite high. So, in this correlation, on the X-axis would be blood alcohol level, and on the Y-axis is their self-rated attractiveness. The other thing with R you can do is if you square the R, that gives you an estimate of how much of the Y variable, the dependent variable, can be explained by the X variable, the independent variable.
Tirth: Yeah. Perceived attractiveness. Which in this case, doing some dirty math, it comes out to around 0.25.
Lu: Meaning 25% of the variability in people’s self judgment of their attractiveness can be explained by blood alcohol levels.
Tirth: Just straight up blood alcohol level.
Lu: Which is quite robust.
Tirth: Yeah, it’s pretty interesting. They even have a p-value here, just noting significance, .012.
Lu: Okay. But did they have a separate panel of judges determine whether these people were actually attractive? Because what if more attractive people were drinking more at that bar? Maybe people were buying them drinks.
Tirth: No, no. Wow, you should have been part of this study. The experimenters actually mentioned that at the very end. They’re like, one of the limitations of the first experiment is that attractive people tend to go to bars more
Lu: And drink more at the bars because maybe people are giving them free drinks. Confounding factor.
Tirth: That’s exactly…well, yeah, they didn’t mention that. Is this something you’re familiar with? Because I’m not.
Lu: Of course. I’ve never had to pay for a drink at a bar, please.
Tirth: Oh. Wow, my experience is the exact opposite. They often charge me double and for watered down drinks. Half the alcohol, double the price.
Lu: In attempt to get you to leave?
Tirth: Uh-huh. Indeed.
Lu: I see. It’s very unfortunate. So, anyways, armed with this information, they proceeded to experiment two?
Tirth: Yes, they moved on to experiment two. Like I said, the experimenters formed a fake research firm for a food company.
Lu: Okay, just as a reminder, there are four categories:
- 1) People who got real alcohol and were told they got real alcohol,
- 2) people who got real alcohol but told they weren’t getting real alcohol,
- 3) people who got fake alcohol but told they were getting real alcohol, and then
- 4) people who got fake alcohol but were told they were getting non-alcoholic drinks.
Tirth: Correct. So,
- 1) people who got alcohol and who were told they got alcohol, they rated themselves, these are all median values, I think, was 3.96 on a scale of 1 through 7.
- 2) People who got alcohol, but were told that they didn’t get alcohol, rated themselves 3.86.
- 3) Now people who got no alcohol, but were told they got alcohol, they rated themselves at 3.42.
- 4) People who got no alcohol, but were told and were also told they got no alcohol, rated themselves at 3.09.
Lu: Mhm.
Tirth: After they did all the stats, here’s what they found: people who thought they were getting alcohol rated themselves as more attractive than people who didn’t think they were getting alcohol, regardless of whether they actually got alcohol or not.
Lu: So just being told they were getting alcohol matters more than actually getting alcohol in terms of how highly they rated themselves.
Tirth: That’s correct. Belief, you know. They just believed that they were getting alcohol, and that alone was more than enough for them to say, “Hey, I’m more attractive than I am.”
Lu: Very good.
Tirth: So, as you may recall, the experimenters had independent judges rate the attractiveness of the subjects as well. Well, according to the judges, the subjects in the four different conditions – whether or not they were given alcohol or not, whether or not they were told they got alcohol or not – were not different in terms of attractiveness. So the subjects who were told they are getting alcohol fooled themselves into thinking they are more attractive.
Lu: What practical value does this study have? How can listeners use this information to their advantage?
Tirth: Well, I’ll say this, if our listeners are going out tonight or having a great night on the town, they should just look in the mirror before they leave and say, “You are drunk,” and I think that’ll do the trick.
Lu: Mhm. That will give them a boost of confidence.
Tirth: Yeah, they don’t even have to say, “You’re confident, you’re attractive, you’re powerful.” None of that stuff, okay? Just look in the mirror and say, “You are a drunk.”
Lu: Mm. Excellent.
Article citation
Begue et al., 2012. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder’: People who think they are drunk also think they are attractive. British Journal of Psychology. https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02114.x
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