You guessed it. The participants who actually drank the alcohol added more graffiti than those in the other conditions. The exact nature of the graffiti was inconsistent (and unspecified by the authors, perhaps because some smartass took certain liberties with the experimenter’s image), ranging from signing one’s autograph to hostile comments about the university administration. This may not sound terribly surprising, but the findings do tell us beyond mere conjecture that, yes, alcohol does indeed contribute causally to graffiti, which again may be why much of Belfast (with the exception of the genuine artwork commemorating The Troubles) resembles the side of an Amtrak train.
Perhaps the best overall theoretical framework for understanding the effects of alcohol on social cognition and behavior is offered by the psychologist Claude Steel, currently at Stanford University. The clearest presentation of Steele’s “alcohol myopia” theory can be found in a 1990 essay from American Psychologist with Robert Josephs of the University of Michigan. Steele and Josephs write that intoxication causes, “a state of shortsightedness in which superficially understood, immediate aspects of experience have a disproportionate influence on behavior and emotion, a state in which we can see the tree, albeit more dimly, but miss the forest altogether.”
One central aspect of the alcohol myopia theory is that alcohol reduces the influence of inhibiting cues and meanings, so that only the immediate provoking cue seems especially salient. For example, imagine you find yourself sitting next to your boss at a work party one evening and you’re still angry over the fact that he passed you up for a promotion a few days earlier. When you overhear him mention the position to someone else at the table, you instinctively bristle. You want to confront him about it. The alcohol myopia theory predicts that, under sober conditions, you’d think twice before venting your anger to your boss because there are all sorts of reasons (such as paying your rent or financing your daughter’s braces, or embarrassingly having to avoid your coworkers’ gaze for the next few weeks) why it may be best to muzzle your wrath and maintain a stiff upper lip until the next opportunity for promotion arises. But if you’ve already downed half the bottle of Chilean wine ordered for your table, your boss’s happenstance comment about the position would serve as a provoking cue without these inhibiting thoughts to derail your knee-jerk emotional reaction, and you’ll probably rather foolishly let him have it.
Perhaps it’s true then what Thomas de Quincy observed in his 1856 Confessions of an English Opium Eater: “It 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.”
In this column presented by Scientific American Mind magazine, research psychologist Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast ponders some of the more obscure aspects of everyday human behavior. Ever wonder why yawning is contagious, why we point with our index fingers instead of our thumbs or whether being breastfed as an infant influences your sexual preferences as an adult? Get a closer look at the latest data as “Bering in Mind” tackles these and other quirky questions about human nature. Sign up for the RSS feed or friend Dr. Bering on Facebook and never miss an installment again.
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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.