Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki has explained how “beer goggles” change our perception of attractiveness in a now-viral video that’s sweeping the internet.

The colloquial term ‘beer goggles’ will be familiar to many of us, with its use in common parlance for how we might perceive things differently when slightly inebriated.

Now, Australian scholar and science communicator Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki has explained the basis of the phenomenon in a TikTok video that has been widely shared.

“Alcohol is absolutely amazing,” the doctor said in the video, which was posted to his verified TikTok page. “It can strip oil stains off a garage floor, but it can also change your human perception of reality”.

Dr Kruszelnicki pointed to a 2003 study that explored the effects of alcohol on the perception of heterosexual college students. “When it came to rating the attractiveness of other people, women found men a bit more attractive, but men found women a whole lot more attractive,” he explained.