The Beer Goggles Effect Is A Myth, Study Reveals

Could the “beer goggles effect” — the idea that drinking alcohol causes people to see others as more attractive — be a myth?

It turns out that the beer goggle theory is, in fact, too good to be true. The beer goggle myth was busted after British researchers tested the “beer goggles effect” in a real-world setting rather than in a laboratory.

And, yes, studying this topic does have some importance, for the “beer goggles” effect is often used to explain, at least in part, why people take more sexual risks after consuming alcohol.

found that people who had drunk alcohol actually rated faces as less attractive than those who had not been drinking. The Daily Star said the researchers also used pictures of young women that had been digitally altered to make them appear younger or older. Women who drank alcohol had a reduced ability to guess the age of the models but the men’s judgement was unaffected.

This study appears to suggest that alcohol intake may not affect men’s age perception, and may make faces less rather than more attractive.

However, it does have several limitations. For example, the drinking and non-drinking groups may have differed in ways other than their alcohol use that affected their perceptions of age or attractiveness. Faces were digitally made up and altered to represent different ages, and the results may not accurately reflect how well people can judge the ages of real people in real-life situations.

In addition, the study asked both men and women to rate the ‘attractiveness’ of female faces, which does not necessarily equate to sexual attractiveness.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Psychology.