New study looks again at how alcohol influences attraction

For a phenomenon that is so deeply engrained in the public consciousness, the scientific evidence regarding what has been called "beer goggles" is surprisingly inconsistent. The term refers to finding people more attractive after drinking alcohol, and there is a wealth of scientific evidence both for and against its existence.

The effect has become a trope in popular culture, with countless shows and movies referencing it. Bart sees Aunt Selma as a beautiful young woman through a pair of Duff beer goggles in The Simpsons, while Mythbusters even tested whether the effect was real (they concluded it was plausible).

The latest study to throw its hat into the ring was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs by scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Stanford University. It has added to the pool of evidence that rejects the existence of beer goggles. But what the work found is that alcohol seems to give people “liquid courage,” increasing their willingness to interact with people they find attractive.

You can Google for goggles

This is by no means the first study to look into the beer goggles effect. One of the earliest experiments dates back to 1990 and was carried out by a team at North Dakota State University. Participants drinking in a bar were asked to rate the attractiveness of both pictures of strangers and their fellow bar patrons. The team found no change in these ratings as the participants drank more throughout the evening, leading them to also conclude that alcohol doesn’t affect perceived attractiveness.

Mythbusters tackles the goggles.

Conversely, a 2003 British study and a 2008 Australian study, among others, found the opposite—that attractiveness ratings of strangers did seem to increase when alcohol was consumed. It has also since been found that alcohol can even increase the perceived attractiveness of inanimate objects such as landscapes and that the effect is enhanced when subjects smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol.

The current study recruited 18 pairs of male friends who were given vodka-cranberries until their breath-alcohol content peaked at an average of 0.07 percent—just under the drunk-driving limit in the US—and asked to rate the attractiveness of pictures of subjects. They also attended a separate session where they repeated the task after drinking non-alcoholic versions of the drinks. In both sessions, the pairs were allowed to chat to one another to somewhat replicate a realistic social environment, although they were asked to refrain from discussing the pictures they were shown.

Goggle-free, but confident

The attractiveness ratings the participants gave were not significantly different between the two sessions, leading the scientists to conclude that alcohol had not significantly affected the participants’ perception of attractiveness, i.e., there were no beer goggles.

But the study didn't stop there. The participants were led to believe they had a chance of interacting with the subjects in the pictures during future sessions (this level of deception typically requires university approval). This potential for interaction is present in real-world situations and is something the authors think is important to include.

After both the alcohol and non-alcohol sessions, the participants were asked which subjects they would most like to interact with in a future study. After the alcohol session, they were 1.7 times more likely to choose the four subjects they had rated as most attractive—in other words, the alcohol had given them what's been called “liquid courage.”

This finding aligns well with the group’s previous work, which suggests that the effects of alcohol in social settings can largely be explained by its tendency to free people from the preoccupation with social rejection, making it easier for them to pursue social rewards.

Notably, though, the study didn’t include a placebo; the participants were told whether they were drinking alcohol or not. This is especially significant given that previous research has shown people rate their own positive attributes more highly when they think they’ve consumed alcohol, showing experiments probing the influence of alcohol can be susceptible to the placebo effect.

Additionally, there were only 36 participants. Although the authors determined that their study nonetheless had sufficient statistical power to detect a potential effect of a similar magnitude to the ones seen in previous research, replication will be critical here.

It will come as a surprise to no one that unpacking the laws of human interactions is a complicated endeavor. They’re an intricate interplay of attraction, feelings, confidence, situational factors, and more—even the deceptively simple task of understanding how alcohol affects attraction has no concrete conclusion yet. So while this study adds to our evidence, we’re by no means at a definitive understanding of how alcohol influences our attraction.

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2023. DOI: 10.15288/jsad.22-00355