Are Beer Goggles Real? – Glitches in the Matrix

Are Beer Goggles Real? – Glitches in the Matrix – by Liam Sweeny.

Sometimes I get science, and sometimes I don’t. And what I’m about to tell you, I think, is fun science, but perhaps dubious science. Let’s find out.

Beer goggles. Have a couple of drinks, and a 7 becomes a 9, and a 9 becomes double digits. (I don’t rate women with numbers in real life, but the internet is awash with literary devices.) Any of us who have ever drunk to excess have a story of waking up next to someone they’d just walk by on the street.. and maybe had before the boozy magic.

So what I “beer goggles” don’t actually exist?

An experiment at Stanford University tested a group of heterosexual men by giving them varying degrees of alcohol and showing them pics and vids of women they “might meet later.” They were asked to pick the four most attractive, and also the four they’d most like to meet. When they were just drinking cranberry juice, the most attractive women and the women they most wanted to meet weren’t necessarily the same people. And this was just about looks. The researchers concluded that the women they most wanted to meet were the one they thought they had the best chances with, not necessarily the most attractive.

When vodka was added, the men wanted to meet the same women they found most attractive. Basically, with the alcohol, they weren’t so worried about “gettable.” They had confidence, and therefore wanted to meet the most attractive women.

Now they say this disproves beer goggles, but I don’t see it. Beer goggles makes her more of a catch, not me, right?

I don’t think I was aiming high when I ended up in bed with a woman who brought a monkey that was addicted to Newport Light 100’s and could somehow scratch off the two-dollar scratchoffs. I mean, she got up and drank a full jar of Saurkraut and told me she didn’t have a cellphone.

Maybe she had beer goggles too.

From The New Scientist.

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