Research Paper about Beer Goggles Phenomenon
It has been told that when one is intoxicated, they feel as if everyone even those they didn’t find attractive before attractive. Thus, when under the influence of alcohol, it is said to change their perception of whom they find attractive. Many say that it is a myth that they find people that they would have never found attractive now attractive when under the influence. While others say that it is true that they have once been influenced by alcohol and found someone they never once found attractive at the moment they had alcohol in their system. It has been said that when under the influence people find it calming, less stressful, and relaxing which affects the individual’s behavior on how they act when all their nerves and anxiety had gone away. The alcohol in the system seems to somehow affect the perception of the attractiveness of others, but is it or is it all false?
Beer goggles are the concept of the effects of alcohol and its perception on making an individual that one was not previously attracted to attractive. There have been many studies that show that beer goggles are a true phenomenon while others say it's false and have other answers or have an unclear answer. In the Journal of Social Psychology, they had a similar study where participants rated the attractiveness of others through a survey while intoxicated, and then they took constant breath test (BAC) to check how much alcohol they had consumed (Lyvers, M., Cholakians, E., Puorro, M., & Sundram, S., 2011). In another similar study, they studied beer goggles while doing a task of finding the attractive or unattractive face more distracting with both a non-intoxicated and intoxicated group. (Monk, R.l., Qureshi, A.W., Lee, S., Darcy, N., Darker, G., 2020). Then we had another study that mentions the more alcohol in the system the more they find someone attractive. (Van Den Abbeele, J., Penton-Voak, I., Attwood, A.S., Stephen, I.D., Munafo, M.R., 2015). Then in the next group, it has a similar experiment to ours but when they rate attractiveness, they rate people and places. They wanted to explore the effects of beer goggles on more than one stimuli of attractiveness level from faces only to faces and other stimuli. (Xiong, C. Xiaoyu, W., Dong Yang, Y.C., 2014). All these studies experiment on the possibilities of beer goggles.
In our study, we will be testing out if the phenomenon of beer goggles is true. In our study, we will have a total of 30 participants that will be placed at random into two groups, the placebo group, and the alcohol group. The participants in both groups will be told that they are consuming alcohol none knowing in which groups they are in. The placebo group with being given water with water tonic and lime while the alcohol group with being given vodka tonic water and lime. They will be hanging out playing games and then given a questionnaire to which they then rate the attractiveness of others. Which will answer if beer goggles are true or false. Then the research will lean towards the alcohol group will rate more people attractive than those in the placebo group.
Method
Participants
30 participants completed this study: They were assigned to two groups the placebo and the alcohol group. In the placebo group, there were 4 females and 8 males and in the alcohol group, there were 15 females and 3 males. The average age among the participants was 19 (SD=0.98). Participants were all undergraduate students that received credit for participating.
Procedures
IRB was approved and obtained before we began the study. All researchers had to then complete their CITI training to take part in the study. We then ran a pilot test to validate the measure of attractiveness and other parts of our survey in the questionnaire as well as to measure the flow of the survey. The pilot testers were not included in the experiment. Consent forms were then given out to participants to inform them of the background of the research. The experimental design was randomly assigned when all 30 participants arrived at the same location at the same given time. Once all participants arrived, they were given drinks. The placebo group was told that they were drinking alcohol whilst being given nonalcoholic drinks which were water with tonic water and lime. At the same time, the drinking group was also being told they were drinking alcohol and were given vodka with tonic water and lime. To pass the time while drinking the participants were allowed to play cards, play drinking games, and listen to music. At the end of the night, the participants were given a questionnaire about their drinking habits, perception of acceptable sexual activities, and how affected they thought they were by their drinking on a scale of 1 (sober) to 10 (drunk).
