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Helping uglies find love since dawn of time
By BECK ELEVEN - The Press | Wednesday, 13 August 2008
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If you have never gone to bed with an ugly person but woken up with quite a few, then academic research into beer-goggles might explain the mystery.
"Beer-goggles" refers to vision that has been altered by booze usually meaning the more a person drinks, the more attractive a potential partner becomes.
New research has shown that wearers of beer-goggles, or rose-tinted spectacles are being seduced by false perceptions of beauty.
Watched by scientists, vodka-fuelled human guinea pigs at Bristol University in England were asked to rate the attractiveness of men and women on a seven-point scale.
The same faces were then shown to volunteers who had consumed only soft drinks.
Those who had been drinking alcohol scored the faces about 10 per cent higher than the non-drinkers.
Both groups imbibers and abstainers were tested again the following day and the men who had drunk alcohol still rated pictures of women higher.
Dr Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist who led the study, said the findings were important because of the role drink plays in unsafe sex.
"It is thought alcohol stimulates the striatum, an area of the brain important in attraction," he said.
Family Planning chief executive Jackie Edmond said although the study was clearly tongue-in-cheek, it supported the fact that alcohol caused drinkers to lose inhibitions.
"It's not Einstein stuff alcohol blurs people's decision-making capacity," she said. "People need to keep themselves safe and use contraception and condoms but that becomes increasingly hard to do the more you've been drinking."