Based on surveys filled out by the subjects, the scientists were able to narrow down drinking behaviours to four subgroups, each one taking its cues from literature and pop-culture. The research found that the cluster they called “Hemingway”, was the largest group.
Advertisement
It sounds like the kind of time-wasting quiz that dominated the web in the early 2000s, but psychologists from the University of Missouri, Columbia, are now ready to ask the question in a (slightly) more serious format. In something of a cop-out answer, these are people whose behaviour simply doesn’t change as they drink.
Can a few too many cocktails turn you into “Mr. Hyde”?
Like the beloved, cheerful nanny, the “Mary Poppins” group was composed of a small number of drinkers (14 percent of the sample) who are particularly agreeable when sober (this would be the friendliest, most cooperative friend you have).
The next drunk is referred to as the Mary Poppins, and this drunk is “practically flawless in every way” (that’s how Ms. Poppins describes herself in the film). Around 15 per cent of participants fall into this personality group and include both men and women. The researchers say that the Hydes, named after the character in the Robert Louis Stevenson novella published in 1886 (as The odd Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), become less conscientious and intellectual and more disagreeable when they drink.
This group-named after the Eddy Murphy-played character who is chemically transformed into the more confident, extraverted “Buddy Love”-was particularly introverted when sober, but showed a large increase in extraversion when drunk, as well as a decrease in conscientiousness“”.
I met the “Nutty Professor” in black and white. Of the group studied, 19% could be compared to Professor Klump.
It probably led to the joke, “If you are strong, brave, smart and very sexy, go home”. The “how” is pretty straightforward.
“The Nutty Professors may be the most dramatic, (but) this does not appear to be associated with elevated harm”, the researchers wrote. But for the first time, science has made a decision to step in and define the main types of drunk personalities out there, and just how many people fall into them. For example, the “drunk types” were based on self-reported information and on “typical” drunken experiences that did not allow researchers to investigate personality differences across different types of of drunk situations.
There are approximately 93 “rum” phrases in the English language, about 64 whiskey phrases and quotes, nearly 500 on drinking, but only four types of drunks – and if that isn’t rum indeed, then nothing is.
Advertisement
Images: Charles D P Miller, Jennie Park, Oscar Palop, Dennis Skley, Florida Keys Public Library used under Creative Commons.
