If you're superficial, beer goggles are your worst enemy, but if you're horny, they're your best friend. But is this basement phenomenon for real? Or is it just a convenient excuse for lowering standards and giving into our basest desires? Sandra Himen explores the science behind the social lubricant.
In our culture of blacked out make-outs and morning-after regrets, the phenomenon of "beer goggles" is not a foreign concept. We've all heard the excuses: "So it was really dark. How was I supposed to know he was missing a limb?" Or "She seemed cute enough. A lot of grown women have facial hair, right?" At least in the case of type-A college students, it seems that all it takes to transform even the most superficially selective of standards into those of an oversexed, blind mole rat is an elixir of poor lighting and moderate inebriation. Why exactly do we feel the inclination to shack up with the creature from the black lagoon? Some chalk it up to desperation, poor judgment or bad luck. Or could it be in fact the opposite, that we all become visibly more attractive and develop more vibrant personalities as the night goes on?
The beer goggles effect is defined as the phenomenon whereby "the consumption of alcohol lowers sexual inhibitions to the point that very little or no discretion is used." The term is also somewhat humorously applicable when an individual is "observed making advances towards or later regretting sexual contact with a partner that is deemed unacceptably scandalous" while sober.
Since ancient times, the aphrodisiacal qualities of wine have been well known, but until recently the neurobiological underpinnings were little understood. An admitted victim of booze-induced poor judgment, I was curious to investigate whether there may be some neurological basis to the beer goggle effect, or if it's just another frat basement urban legend. After conducting a survey of the archives of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, I found that even from a scientific perspective, beauty truly does lie in the eye of the beer-holder.
A recent study from Penn State found that when ethanol is distributed to wild-type drosophila, more commonly known as the "fruit fly," their courtship patterns changed drastically, exhibiting much higher rates of attempted intermale matings. Unfortunately for our drosophila, while their sexual arousal increases under the influence, overall sexual performance falls falteringly short. Similarly, a lab in Scotland discovered that both heterosexual men and women who have consumed four servings of alcohol found the faces of the opposite sex 25% more attractive than their sober counterparts. Interestingly enough, as lead investigator Barry Jone observed, the increase in perceived "hotness" among intoxicated individuals did not change relative to the spectrum of attractiveness.
At the Manchester University, scientists went as far as to patent a formula for the beer goggle effect, a numerical system ranging from one to 100 that mathematically derives the probability of "hooking up" with said individual. The determining factors of their formula are number of units of alcohol consumed (An), smokiness of the room (s-rated from zero to 10), luminance of 'person of interest' (L candelas per square metre; typically one pitch black superimposed on normal room lighting), Snellen visual acuity (Vo) and distance from 'person of interest' (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres). According to the rating system, a numerical value between one and 50 would indicate that a person normally perceived as unattractive appears "less visually offensive."
A rating above 50, on the other hand, and you may have found yourself a Heidi Klum look-alike, until the next morning, that is.
