For the first time, scientists have proven that "beer goggles" are real - other people really do look more attractive to us if we have been drinking. Surprisingly, the beer goggles effect was not limited to just the opposite sex among the ostensibly straight volunteers recruited for the study - they also rated people from their own sex as more attractive.

 

Scientists in England gave 84 heterosexual college students chilled lime-flavored drinks that were either non-alcoholic or given a dose of vodka equivalent in alcohol to a large glass of wine or a pint-and-a-half of beer.

 

After 15 minutes, the volunteers were shown photos of 40 other college students from both sexes. Both men and women who drank booze found these faces more attractive, "a roughly 10 percent increase in ratings of attractiveness," said researcher Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in England.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080814/sc_livescience/peoplereallydolookbetterwhenyoudrink

I've been drinking....

Daba's pic is looking hawt.

 I need to be alone now.

beer: the cause and solution to all life's problems

oh snap. it affects women more than men. this explains a lot.

British researchers have discovered why alcohol drinking makes other people look better. The reason is linked to humans' preference for symmetrical faces. Bad news for women: You get more affected by the beer goggles than men.

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http://gizmodo.com/5616197/the-secret-of-beer-coggles-discovered?

Scientists Explain Beer Goggles

 

They approached 64 students, asking them to take a Breathalyzer (to determine sobriety; half were sober, the other half drunk) and instructed them to examine pictures. Students looked at 20 pairs of faces—one symmetrical and one asymmetrical—and then they looked at 20 individual visages. After inspecting the pairs, the participants informed the researchers which pictures were more attractive. When they examined the individual pictures, they had to determine if the faces were symmetrical. Sober students were more attracted to the pictures of symmetrical faces and could better determine symmetry than their drunken counterpoints.

 

The researchers concluded that alcohol impairs our ability to sense symmetry and drunk women were less capable of detecting balance than drunk men. The researchers suspect that men are better at sensing attractiveness because they are more visual (read: they ogle more).