January 25, 2006

Scientifical Proof That Beer Goggles Exist

Beer goggles. We've all had them. You spend an intoxicated evening drooling over a girl you're convinced looks like Tara Reid, and the next morning she looks like Terry Gilliam. Turns out it's not just a function of your lonely, attention-starved ego trying to give you a leg up - it's just your nucleus accumbens getting out of whack. We hate it when that happens.

It's no secret that excessive drinking leads to poor judgment behind the wheel. Well, it can also lead to poor judgment at your local pub. According to the aforementioned study, what constitutes "attractive" changes drastically after a few drinks. In other words, while you may think you're hitting on a 10, there's a chance you're actually picking up someone in the lower-single digits.

The reasons behind this phenomenon have to do with alcohol stimulating the nucleus accumbens, aka "the part of the brain which is used to determine facial attractiveness." In the 2002 study, male and female students were shown pictures of members of the opposite sex and asked to rate them on a scale of 1-7 (sounds cruel, we know). The more students drank, the higher they rated the photographs.

via Ask Yahoo!: Do Beer Goggles Really Exist?