Researchers at Cardiff University found that while intoxicated and in drinking environments, people’s perception of their state related to how their own drunkenness ranked in comparison to those around them.
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After imbibing, the participants were separated into eight different social groups (one for each gender in each location), and individual breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) levels were then ranked within each reference group.
In other words, people evaluate their own levels of drunkenness by comparing themselves to other people around them. The idea was to try to get people who were out with different social groups, because the researchers were interested in how peers influenced people’s subjective experience of drunkenness.
This essentially means that being the drunkest person in a room full of people who aren’t drinking will make you wish you drank less, and that being sober in a room full of drunk people will encourage you to drink more.
“This has very important implications for how we might work to reduce excessive alcohol consumption”, said Moore.
A sub-set of 400 participants answered a series of questions about how they perceived their level of drunkennes, and the drunker others around them were, the less drunk they perceived themselves to be.
“Researchers have historically worked under the assumption that those who drink the most alcohol incorrectly “imagine” everyone else also drinks to excess”, co-author Simon Moore said in a statement.
On the other, you’re scientifically more likely to feel your drunkenness if you’re hanging out with pals who’ve abstained. “Making people aware of the way an environment can shape their judgments might be enough for them to pay more attention to their own health”.
In addition to the blood-alcohol levels, the researchers also surveyed a group of individuals from the original 1,800 and asked them to rate how drunk they were on a scale from 1 (totally sober) to 10 (completely drunk). “Our theory predicts the latter approach would have greatest impact”. Respondents with a BrAC of zero were not included in the rank-judgement analyses.
In the past, people have only been studied when sober and in non-drinking environments – relying on their own memories of being drunk.
The results, published in the journal BMC Public Health, showed that on average, people perceived themselves as moderately drunk and moderately at risk, although their BrAC exceeded standard drink driving limits (35 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath).
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Using mathematical models, the researchers calculated how the average level of intoxication compared to how drunk people thought that they were, and how risky they considered their behavior to be. “Our work tapped into some quite fundamental aspects of how we think”, Moore says. A team of social scientists recently completed a study of bar and club hoppers in Cardiff, Wales and discovered that most had incredibly inaccurate notions of their drunkenness and the dangers of drinking.
