Posted on 09/09/2002 7:55:37 AM PDT by dead
A study has established a link between drinking alcohol and perceptions of beauty.
Scientists in Scotland found evidence of the so-called "beer goggles" effect in a study involving 80 students.
The researchers wanted to measure the infamous phenomenon by which members of the opposite sex become more attractive as one drinks more alcohol.
They discovered that men and women who have drunk a moderate amount of alcohol find the faces of the opposite sex 25 per cent more attractive than do their sober counterparts.
The study revealed that there was no difference in the beer goggles effect between men and women.
The students at Glasgow University were shown colour photographs of 120 male and female St Andrews University students aged between 18 and 26.
Participants were asked to rate their aesthetic properties on a scale of between one - highly unattractive - to seven - highly attractive.
Half of the students had drunk up to four units of alcohol, equivalent to a maximum of around two pints (1.1 litres) of lager or two-and-a-half glasses of wine.
The 40 tipsy aesthetes rated the people in the photographs as broadly more attractive than their abstemious counterparts.
Professor Barry Jones, from Glasgow University's psychology department, and his fellow academic, Ben Jones, from St Andrews University, led the study.
They said: "Everyone's heard of the beer goggles effect but we wanted to measure once and for all whether a moderate amount of alcohol increases the judgement of facial attractiveness.
The increase in perceived attractiveness appeared to be the same for the ugly people as the pretty people.
Attractiveness provides a very important signal of mate quality, it shows you have good genes and a healthy body."
The beer goggles phenomenon is caused by alcohol stimulating the part of the human brain which is used to determine facial attractiveness, the nucleus accumbens, they said.
DPA
"I never went to bed with an ugly woman - I've woken up with a few - but never went to bed with one."
My thoughts exactly. They really needed a study to figure this one out?
Is it me or does Chelsea have an adams apple in that photo?
Upon seeing a billboard with a picture of a beautiful young woman with a six-pack of beer. Joe's girlfriend turned to him and asked, "Is that what I'll look like if I drink a six-pack of beer?"
"No," Joe replied. "That is what you will look like if I drink the six-pack!"
All that money and beer, and they come up with the wrong conclusion.(or at least the wrong body part).
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