The Moderating Effect of Stimulus Attractiveness on the Effect of Alcohol Consumption on Attractiveness Ratings

 

Abstract and Introduction

Abstract

Aims: To explore the enhancing effect of alcohol consumption on attractiveness ratings, in that few studies on the Beer Goggles effect control the stimuli attractiveness level and researchers have seldom considered extending the effect to stimuli other than faces.

Methods: Male and female participants (n = 103) were randomly assigned to alcohol consumption or placebo groups. Both groups were asked to assess the attractiveness of two types of pictures (faces and landscapes) with three levels of attractiveness for each stimulus category (high, moderate and low).

Results: We found significant interactions between beverage type and attractiveness level. Attractiveness ratings for moderate- and low-attractiveness faces were significantly higher in the alcohol compared with placebo condition, while there was no significant difference for high-attractiveness stimuli between these two conditions. As for landscapes, only low-attractiveness stimuli were rated significantly higher in the alcohol condition.

Conclusion: Whether or not alcohol consumption leads to an increase in attractiveness ratings depends on the initial attractiveness of the stimulus materials. Alcohol consumption tends to affect ratings for stimuli with relatively low attractiveness. Furthermore, this effect is not limited to faces; it extends to other types of stimuli like landscapes.

Introduction

Harmful drinking impairs individuals' ability to control their behaviour (Mulvihill et al., 1997). With the weakening of self-control, alcohol consumption can motivate sexual compulsivity, contributing to risky sexual behaviours (Cooper, 2002; Griffin et al., 2012) and even sexual assault (Norris and Cubbins, 1992). Since individuals seek the company of those whose faces attract them (Huston, 1973; Gangestad and Buss, 1993), researchers have investigated the Beer Goggles effect, which describes the phenomenon whereby attractiveness ratings for faces increase after alcohol consumption.

Researchers have speculated that alcohol consumption can enhance ratings of facial attractiveness (Agocha and Cooper, 1999). Pennebaker et al. (1979) observed that alcohol consumers in a bar gave higher attractiveness ratings to individuals of the opposite sex at closing time. This result was not affected by the raters' sex. This effect was also found in a correlation study on the relationship between blood alcohol concentration (BAC) and face ratings (Gladue and Delaney, 1990). Jones et al. (2003) conducted the first quasi-experiment to investigate whether the raters' sex influences attractiveness ratings, and found that alcohol drinkers rated opposite-sex faces as more attractive than non-drinkers. However, the validity of the quasi-experiment is questionable due to a sampling bias, since all participants were recruited in a bar. Additionally, the use of participants' self-report, rather than an experimental manipulation to measure level of alcohol intake, further weakened the validity of the study.

To overcome these drawbacks, Parker et al. (2008) conducted the first laboratory experiment to verify the effect more stringently. This experiment not only replicated the results of previous studies, indicating that alcohol consumption leads to an increase in attractiveness ratings, but also showed that the effect is not specific to opposite-sex faces. Furthermore, some researchers adopted a breath test to measure participants' BAC as a measure of alcohol consumption before they made attractiveness ratings. Results showed that both moderately (BAC = 0.01–0.09%), and highly intoxicated participants (BAC = 0.10–0.19%) gave significantly higher attractiveness ratings than non-intoxicated controls (Lyvers et al., 2011).

Since many studies have verified the Beer Goggles effect using several methods and paradigms, the enhancing effect of alcohol consumption on face attractiveness ratings appears to be stable. Therefore, it is surprising that Neave et al. (2008) did not replicate the Beer Goggles effect. They speculated that their failure to replicate the results might have been due to stimulus selection, since they used only faces that received 'average' ratings during material preparation. Selecting very similar stimuli in terms of attractiveness may obscure the effect of alcohol consumption on attractiveness ratings. Furthermore, Halsey et al. (2010) found that alcohol drinkers performed worse in symmetry judgment than did placebo drinkers. The result indicated that alcohol consumption can reduce the accuracy in discerning symmetry for facial stimuli. Since symmetric faces are more attractive than asymmetric ones (Fink et al., 2006; Little et al., 2008), it is suggested that facial symmetry influences the Beer Goggles effect. The relationship between symmetry and attractiveness could potentially explain how the Beer Goggles effect may be influenced by stimulus attractiveness levels.

Additionally, it is unlikely that the enhancing effect of alcohol consumption on attractiveness ratings is limited to faces. Previous studies have confirmed that alcohol consumption influences various psychological processes, such as motion control (Houa et al., 2010), and risky decision-making (Goudriaan et al., 2011; van Ravenzwaaij et al., 2012). It is possible that alcohol consumption also enhances attractiveness ratings for other categories. Attwood et al. (2012) used both facial and landscape pictures to test the Beer Goggles effect, finding a similar enhancing effect of alcohol consumption for both types of stimuli. However, the study used insufficient landscape stimuli, weakening its external validity; thus the enhancing effect could not be extend to other stimuli. Therefore, more studies are required to systematically investigate whether the Beer Goggles effect is a general phenomenon or is specific to certain stimuli, especially in relation to aesthetics.

Since Neave et al. (2008) construed that not having considered attractiveness levels may have resulted in their inability to verify the Beer Goggles effect, we therefore explored this further by manipulating stimulus attractiveness levels (high, moderate and low). Halsey et al. (2012) found alcohol consumption had a weaker influence on the preference for symmetric, rather than asymmetric faces. The former were usually regarded as more attractive than the latter. Thus, it is reasonable to hypothesize that alcohol consumption does not affect attractiveness ratings for highly attractive stimuli. Furthermore, we manipulated the stimulus category (face or landscape) to clarify whether the enhancing effect is specific to faces. If alcohol consumption leads to higher attractiveness ratings for both facial and landscape stimuli, we can conclude that the Beer Goggles effect reflects a universal phenomenon