In contrast, those in the “high-fear” condition heard this information:
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 involve having you engage in a discussion on interpersonal attractiveness with a group of girls. At the end of the discussion, you will rate each other on a number of the qualities that people think of as being desirable. For the purposes of that experiment it is necessary for the girls to have some idea of what kind of person you are so I will have them in the control room with me during this experiment so that they can listen to your answers. I hope you don’t mind too much.
To “enhance the reality” of the high-fear condition, participants in this condition also heard a prerecorded conversation of a group of girls over the intercom throughout the taste-testing period. Presumably the girls were giggling, or whatever it is that girls do when they talk insidiously about boys. The results should be obvious. The guys in the high-fear condition drank more alcohol (mean = .16 fluid ounces of wine per sip) during the free-range taste-testing than those in the low-fear condition (mean = .12 fluid ounces). That may not seem like a big difference, but the comparison reached statistical significance.
Next up we have another study from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, this one published in 1983 by psychologists Natalie Korytnyk and David Perkins from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Korytnyk and Perkins were apparently bothered by the rising frequency of vandalism in their hometown, particularly graffiti. Since they had a hunch that alcohol was to blame for these colorful eyesores, the authors set up a clever little experiment to test this hypothesis.
Again, a group of male undergraduate students were recruited for the study. And again the participants were misled about the true purpose of the experiment. They were told that the study was blandly about the “the effects of alcohol on perception.” All participants were given two 6-ounce drinks but, in reality, the students were divided up randomly into two comparison groups: (1) those who were told that their drinks contained a mixture of vodka and tonic water and who actually got this combination; (2) those who were told that their drinks contained only tonic water. Within each of these two groups, half of the students actually got a dose of the alcohol (Smirnoff 80-proof vodka with .4 ounces of ethanol in each drink to prevent taste detection) and the other half got only the tonic water.
Upon finishing both drinks, the participant completed a bogus personality inventory over the next ten minutes, then the experimenter returned to administer their blood-alcohol intoxication (all participants who were told they’d be drinking the real drink were informed they were drunk, to rule out suggestibility effects), and then they were handed a paper-and-pencil spatial intelligence test. Over this saturation period of twenty minutes or so, mild inebriation ran its course for those in the actual alcohol conditions.
After five minutes of working on the test, the experimenter interrupted the participant and excused herself momentarily under the pretext of having to see the secretary down the hall before she left. The participant was asked to stay seated during this time and told they could resume the test as soon as the experimenter returned. In fact, the experimenter went only next door and observed the participant during this ten minute “alone time” through a one-way mirror:
The subject was surrounded on three sides by walls that were covered with posters (e.g., advertising current movies) and signs (e.g., “No Smoking”). Several of the posters and signs (and also the desk at which the subject sat) were partially covered with graffiti in a consistent manner for all subjects. The experimenter waited out of sight for 10 minutes and then returned to the experimental room to fully debrief the subject. Debriefing included asking him if he had added further graffiti anywhere in the room and verifying the accuracy of his response by checking the posters, signs and desk after he left.
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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.