It's science?
The first question that comes to mind about how beer goggles work their sorcery is whether the people you're checking out are actually more attractive to you, or if your judgment is just being impaired by the 14 whiskey-vodkas you just inhaled. Will the object of your desire look the same to you later and you just don't care, or does it actually increase your desire for sex so that you suppress your inhibitions about unattractive bar flies?
As it turns out, a few studies have looked into this perplexing quandary, and they seem to suggest that beer goggles aren't just the result of you being extra horny and therefore less discriminating.
For example, one study done by St. Andrews and Glasgow Universities found that men and women who have consumed a moderate amount of alcohol find the faces of members of the opposite sex 25% more attractive than their sober counterparts.
Another study done at the University of Bristol with 84 college students demonstrated that, on average, they found people 10% hotter after a measly 15 minutes of drinking just two beers. And, the sex of the drinker didn't matter; men and women were both equally likely to find people more attractive after a pathetically small amount of alcohol.
In any event, beer goggles are real! Real we tell you! And they're not just us lowering our standards so we can cry-fuck our coworkers. So, what's going on here to make other adult faces look more attractive?
The leading theory is that it has something to do with bilateral symmetry. Translation: if your face was split down the vertical center, you're the most attractive if the two sides of your face mirror each other.
A couple of studies support this. One experiment, done at the London's Roehampton University, found that alcohol interferes with our ability to perceive asymmetry, which could potentially be the reason why you found that guy's unibrow and triple eyebrow piercing so endearing last weekend. The sober study participants were more drawn to people with symmetrical faces, and were better at picking them out, which supported the researchers' hypothesis. What's more, the intoxicated individuals were less able to notice asymmetry.
An unexpected discovery made in that study was that men were better than women at determining whether faces were asymmetrical or not. The researchers theorized that it has something to do with the fact that men are visual creatures; being more sexually stimulated by imagery than women are, they might pay more attention to nuances in symmetry.
Interestingly, beer goggles also work on yourself, tricking you into thinking you're a bewitching specimen of hunkdom and increasing your self confidence to comedic levels.
To test this, Laurent Begue at the Pierre Mendes-France University conducted an experiment to explore the phenomenon of the affably named "The Drunker I Am, The Hotter I Get" syndrome. She asked 19 weekend warriors in a French bar to rate their own attractiveness on a scale of one to seven. Their alcohol levels were then measured with a breathalyzer test, and not surprisingly, the participants who were the most sloshed were also the most DTF themselves.
Taking all this into consideration, it seems like while beer goggles aren't fully understood yet, the effect is realer than real and comes from the ability of alcohol to make you symmetry-blind and reduce your inhibitions. However, beer goggles can only work their magic with both people involved in a pre-sex mating ritual are good and biffed; beer goggles don't work when it's a one-way game.
That being said, having a drink or sixteen next time you have to sleep with a liver-spotted millionaire to fund your artisanal sheep hair jockstrap start-up. And if that doesn't work, there's always gouging out your eyes! Happy regretful fucking, everyone.
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