


Although your drunken one-night-stand might not be, this new research is a 10 out of 10.
A new study takes a deep dive into alcohol’s influence on how a person perceives attractiveness, otherwise known as “beer goggles,” confirming that inebriation indeed alters how a person sees others.
There’s been a great deal of debate as to whether or not drinking tends to boost the appeal of facial features and symmetry, and scientists from the University of Portsmouth have made some sobering findings.
“We don’t deny the existence of a ‘beer goggles’ effect,” said psychology professor Dr. Alistair Harvey — but they do challenge just how much alcohol changes your physical preferences in others. “Due to the limited research on this topic, we ran a field experiment to help determine why people often experience unexpected – and regretted – sexual escapades after having one too many,”
Though researchers found that alcohol did impair how sensitive drinkers are to facial symmetry, it mattered quite little in terms of who they wanted to leave the bar with. Being drunk, they saw, didn’t change how participants gauged attractiveness.
Harvey’s team surveyed 99 men and women, ages 18 to 62, at a local pub where they rated pictures of people’s faces.
Participants viewed the faces twice with either a normal view or “enhanced symmetry.” After a few rounds, the drunk study subjects had a hard time distinguishing which faces had been enhanced.
Despite the symmetrical slip-ups, Harvey was reluctant to attribute one’s promiscuity to drinking, alone.
“There are a range of possible reasons why alcohol drinkers are more inclined to engage in sex, including a lack of inhibition, heightened expectations, personality traits, and the ‘beer goggles’ effect,” he said.
“Further research is needed to find the missing piece to the puzzle,” Harvey added.
Previous research out of Stamford University also found that “liquid courage” was a driving force in taking people home for a night.
“Conventional wisdom would suggest that alcohol leads people to perceive others as more physically attractive,” study author Dr. Molly Bowdring previously told The Post.