Regrets? I've had a few but I can't blame a fit of the goggles

Published on Sunday 19 April 2009 22:01

MANY men have used it to justify something that they regretted in the morning – but they can forget the "beer goggles" excuse from now on, according to psychologists.

A study has found that, after drinking alcohol, men actually see women as less attractive. Alcohol also makes no difference to a man's ability to guess a woman's age, the research found.

Scientists asked a group of 240 men and women in bars and cafs to look at photographs of women and comment on their age and attractiveness.

Half the participants used in the experiment had consumed alcohol, with effects rated as "relaxed and benign", "blunted and disinhibited", "boisterous and over-expressive", and "unambiguously drunk".

Some of the pictures of 10 young women aged 17 were digitally altered to make them appear younger or older. Make-up was also applied digitally to a number of images.

The findings showed that alcohol reduced the ability of women to guess the age of the models, but not men. Both the effects of alcohol and prettifying a face with make-up had little effect on men's judgment.

Dr Vincent Egan, from the University of Leicester, said: "This study suggests that alcohol consumption and make-up use do not interfere with how old we perceive someone to be.

"Overall, participants who drank alcohol actually rated all the women in the photos as less attractive, compared to the participants who hadn't drunk alcohol. This seemingly flies in the face of the commonly held notion of 'beer goggles'."

Participants consistently over-estimated the age of both mature and immature faces by an average of 3.5 years. The study results were revealed in the British Journal of Psychology.