Does alcohol really turn us into different people? Or, does it merely lower our inhibitions enough to actually be our realist, truest, most honest selves?
Well, according to this study by the Association for Psychological Science, published in Sage Journals, the only thing we can really “blame on the booze” is the projectile vomiting everyone saw at last night’s party.
Contrary to popular belief you may actually be more you when you’re drunk than the other way around.
Check out some of these interesting observations from a 2017 study and decide for yourself. Is your “drunk self” your true self that you’re just too uptight to be sober?
The study talks about how people THINK they are different when they are drunk, but the reality is that their personality actually stayed basically the same. They observed this by having peers socialize sober and then half became intoxicated while some stayed sober (the sober ones became “raters” while the intoxicated group was observed during the same type of socializing from before).
Psychological scientist Rachel Winograd, who conducted the study, explained that, “the raters reliably reported what was visible to them and the participants experienced internal changes that were real to them but imperceptible to observers”.
This seems to display that personality isn’t affected much (if at all) by alcohol, but rather, drunken individuals think personality is affected based on the chemicals in the brain being altered by alcohol or merely the placebo effect (society says you’re different when you’re drunk so you believe you are different when you’re drunk).