For the wet conditions, an experimenter present in the room surreptitiously recorded the approximate amount of alcohol consumed by each person.
After about 25 minutes of spontaneous, non-scripted socializing, participants from both conditions were individually administered a version of the “Thematic Apperception Test” (or, TAT). Although it’s not used as frequently these days, the TAT was at the time a very common psychological projection test where ambiguous images (say, a man looking into a tent) are presented to the participant, and he or she is asked to narrate the scene. Thus, it’s meant to tap into the person’s “unconscious” or “repressed” thoughts. In the present study, Kalin and his colleagues chose images that represented five different areas of thought that alcohol might be expected to effect—namely sex (portrayed by, for example, an image titled “Young couple walking on a sidewalk”), aggression (e.g., “Boxer in gym, looking pensive”), elation (e.g., “Ski jumper in midair”), conflict (e.g., “Negro in a race riot, taunted by a number of white fellows”—embarrassing, yes, but remember it was 1965) and “mysteries of life” (e.g., “Boatman rowing on a lake on moonlit night”). The participants were asked to write a story about each of the images, the general hypothesis being that those in the wet condition would exhibit more explicit and extreme thoughts in response to these particular TAT pictures.
After coding these written responses, the authors found that after about two to three drinks containing 1.5-ounce shots of 86-proof alcohol, participants displayed an increase in “fantasy” thinking, particularly in relation to the “mysteries of life” image theme. In fact, they tended to see a mystery of life dimension even in those images that weren’t meant to induce such thoughts. “Apparently,” the researchers write, “[alcohol] acts to allow or encourage [people] to think in contrasting terms about large or existential life issues. One can think of these…. as indicating a yearning for reflecting on some of life’s basic issues (success-failure, life-death, pleasure-unpleasure, etc.) which is encouraged or released by alcohol in small quantities under social conditions.” For example, a wet participant wrote in response to the “ski jumper in midair” image: “Paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
Now, as a psychologist who studies people’s belief in God, I’ve had more drunken conversations about the meaning of life with ethanol-soaked brains than I care to count. So intuitively this makes sense—I’ve found that, alongside the worm in a bottle of tequila, many people also find God at the bottom of their alcoholic beverages. Be advised, though. After 5-6 drinks, these deep thoughts sound to the sober onlooker about as profound as a potato thudding against a concrete floor. In any event, Kalin and his coauthors suggest that their TAT findings shed some light on why so many people drink small amounts of alcohol socially. “What has not been previously stressed,” they write, “is the early ‘positive’ stage (e.g., 2-3 drinks) in which subjects think more often… about the meaning of life.”
Fast-forward a few decades in psychological science and you’ll come across a few other studies where participants in experiments get boozed up in the laboratory. In an experiment published in a 1975 issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, for example, Raymond Higgins from the University of Kansas and G. Alan Marlatt from the University of Washington asked a group of male introductory psychology students to participate in a wine-tasting task. The students were deceptively told that the study was an investigation “of the effects of psychological mood states on the perception of taste.” Each subject thus sat down to his own private sampling table where the experimenter had neatly laid out for him three-fifths of table wine, three empty glasses, a container of water and another glass for rinsing the palate between samples, and some taste-testing forms listing 63 adjectives (e.g., “sweet,” “bitter,” “strong”). Just before the imbibing, the researcher reminded the participant, “Remember, you can take as many tastes of the drinks as you need to answer the questions. Just pour them into the glasses as you see fit.”
Of course, Higgins and Marlatt weren’t really interested in these undergraduate students’ opinions of cheap table wine at all; they were up to something else entirely. Prior to the taste-testing procedure, participants had been randomly assigned to either a “low-fear condition” or a “high-fear condition.” In the low-fear condition, the students were told the following:
Immediately after this experiment is over, I’m going to ask you to be in another brief experiment that will immediately follow this one. It will simply involve having you rate some pictures of girls according to how attractive you think they are. There may be a few other subjects there doing the same thing. I hope you don’t mind too much.
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13 Comments
Add CommentEvery time I hear statistics misused in statements like “alcohol accounts for 70 percent of fatal traffic accidents” I cringe. I am sick and tired of educated people twisting statistics to an uneducated public to push a personal agenda. The actual figure from the DOT is 50% but even that is meaningless. In the time of day and location of each individual accident, what percentage of all drivers on the road had some alcohol in their system? My nephew was in a serious accident caused by a driver running a red light. The driver was sober by my nephew was coming from a restaurant where he had had wine. This goes down as an accident involving alcohol. The misuse of statistics to persuade the public about things that are untrue or misleading is pervasive. The old saying “figures lie and liars figure” is only true with a public that is uneducated on statistics and that needs to change and people masquerading as scientists need to place their personal agenda on the table up front.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo Mr. Samadams: What is the personal agenda here? Who wouldn't be for reducing deaths which are preventable by not driving a drinking? (Maybe a bar owner)What difference does it matter if it's 40 percent, 50 percent, 70 percent? How do you know your nephew's accident was included in the statistics? Even though the accident was definitely the other guy's fault, a sober person might have a better chance of driving defensively.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are an amateur - at both drinking and science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're wrong, candide. Bering is a provocateur, and a damn good one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuickly bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may whet my mind and say something clever. - Aristophanes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"He uses statistics as a drunkard uses a lamp post......for support rather than illumination" I've had a beer and cannot recall who said it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not entirely surprised. Alcohol, like many other psychoactive substances, does reduce inhibitions (leading people to behave less prudently than normal# and acts as a social lubricant #reducing shyness and other traits that might normally keep one acting properly).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes I do believe it would take the entirety of Northern Island to be able to say that there are more pubs than Fast Fooleries in Texas. Although, I'm pretty sure there are more Fast Food places in NY city than the entirety of Texas... Can anyone tell I'm hungry?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReading comprehension counts, thehustler, I said he was an amateur at drinking and science, which is obvious by the content of the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeing a provocateur has no necessary connection to science or drinking.
I must say I'm quite suspicious of anyone who continues to drink wine after it "rudely invades" his taste buds, hmmm maybe he has no taste buds, or.... far more sinister- does not drink fine wine?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell. Besides all subtle differences in brain chemistry between several types of drinkers, alcohol remains one of the best ansiolytics available, being as pot a selective depressant of CNS functions, starting from the most recent, phylogenetically and in the individual development, such as inhibitory brain zones, so called superI, and ending in the trunk life sustaining nuclei. I always wanted to test the hypothesis that latent homosexuality can be involved in alcoholism. The subject engages in drinking for reducing anxiety driven by sex pulsions, drinking decreases his or her repression system giving strenght to hidden homoerotic drives, which produces more anxiety that leads to increased drinking, an awful autocrine loop. As italians say "si non e vero e ben trovato". I understand that this is not the place for such comments, but found no other place to do it with some kind of confidentiality. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI disagree completely with this last sentence and I feel that it causes much confusion about understanding alcoholic behavior. A sober person is able to successfully integrate all of the multitude of impulses which comprise the behavior they exhibit to the world. Alcohol directly interferes with this process and often presents an aberrant often self-destructive behavior from the drug disabled brain of the inebriante who is struggling with the normally instantaneous integration, encountering obfuscation, and spitting out fragmented components of the true personality. I know. I have been there.
Why so grouchy??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisif you didn't enjoy the article you can critique the information, not the guy who wrote it.
now THAT is being an amateur.