It’s Science: “Beer Goggles” Make You 1.7 Times More Likely To Do This

Every now and then the scientific method confirms something we already know in our gut. The Northland is blessed with quality beer and many of us spend a significant amount of time sipping, slurping and inhaling God's Perfect Elixir. My goal is to sample every beer on the planet, which may end badly, but it's good to have a plan, right?

The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, which I read voraciously from cover to cover, has a new study raising eyebrows and beer steins: "The researchers did not find evidence of beer goggles: Whether or not participants were intoxicated had no effect on how good looking they found others." In plain English: beer, and alcohol in general, won't you necessarily look better to someone else. The old "At 2am everyone looks like a fox!" line is a load of garbage. No they don't. But something else is going on.

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Here's what beer can do, and do well. It increases "Liquid Courage" - the probability of men working up just enough courage to take the first step and make an introduction to someone they find attractive. The study concludes: "When drinking, (men) were 1.71 times more likely to select one of their top-four attractive candidates to potentially meet in a future study compared with when they were sober. Alcohol may not be altering perception but rather enhancing confidence in interactions, giving the men liquid courage to want to meet those they found the most attractive, something they may be much less likely to do otherwise."

Makes sense to me. Alcohol lowers your inhibition and makes you more like to do and say something profoundly stupid. We all knew that in our heart of hearts, and now science has successfully confirmed the obvious. Hooray!

To summarize, consuming more beer, even the good stuff, won't make any of us more attractive. Sorry not sorry. But it will give many people, especially men, enough confidence to crawl off their bar stools and hit on unsuspecting strangers with a really bad opening line. Dating isn't pretty, never has been.

Really, it's been like this since the dawn of time. Awkward introductions lubricated with fine ale.

Some things never change, and that's a very good thing.