No abstract

The beer goggles effect refers to heightened perceptions of attractiveness resulting from intoxication. However, research in this area has produced mixed findings and has largely been reliant on self-report measures of perceived attractiveness. This study aimed to utilize an implicit measure to assess the beer goggles phenomenon in a preregistered study. One hundred twenty-nine heterosexual U.K. university students were recruited (74 female, Mage = 24.12 years, SDage = 9.09 years) in real-life drinking environments (classified post hoc as sober or lightly intoxicated based on Blood Alcohol Concentration [BAC]) to conduct a spatial cuing paradigm that measured the effect of distracting stimuli on task performance. Participants were asked to determine the orientation of a letter while ignoring any incidentally presented (un)attractive facial stimuli. Sober participants appeared to find attractive faces equally distracting, regardless of whether they were being cued to look toward or away from the face—a traditional attractiveness bias. Intoxicated participants, on the other hand, appeared to find attractive and unattractive faces equally distracting. Findings highlight the possibility that the beer goggles phenomenon results from a leveling of the playing field whereby attentional biases toward attractive faces are dampened as a result of light intoxication.

Background Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand that others have different knowledge and beliefs to ourselves, has been the subject of extensive research which suggests that we are not always efficient at taking another’s perspective, known as visual perspective taking (VPT). This has been studied extensively and a growing literature has explored the individual-level factors that may affect perspective taking (e.g. empathy and group membership). However, while emotion and (dis)liking are key aspects within everyday social interaction, research has not hitherto explored how these factors may impact ToM. Method A total of 164 participants took part in a modified director task (31 males (19%), M age = 20.65, SD age = 5.34), exploring how correct object selection may be impacted by another’s emotion (director facial emotion; neutral × happy × sad) and knowledge of their (dis)likes (i.e. director likes specific objects). Result When the director liked the target object or disliked the competitor object, accuracy rates were increased relative to when he disliked the target object or liked the competitor object. When the emotion shown by the director was incongruent with their stated (dis)liking of an object (e.g. happy when he disliked an object), accuracy rates were also increased. None of these effects were significant in the analysis of response time. These findings suggest that knowledge of liking may impact ToM use, as can emotional incongruency, perhaps by increasing the saliency of perspective differences between participant and director. Conclusion As well as contributing further to our understanding of real-life social interactions, these findings may have implications for ToM research, where it appears that more consideration of the target/director’s characteristics may be prudent.