You’ve No Excuse For Being A Bad Drunk – Study Shows Alcohol Doesn’t Change Your Personality

Awful news if you’ve ever tried to blame last night’s embarrassing and brat-like behaviour on too much alcohol: a new study shows that booze doesn’t change our personality.

Yep, you’re just a brat. A sober brat, and a drunken brat.

The Irish Mirror report that even though we ourselves feel like we’re ultra different when we’re drunk, observers don’t really know a difference.

That’s what the results of a study carried out by scientists at the University of Missouri, led by Dr Rachel Winograd, discovered anyway.

156 participants took part in an experiment to see how people drinking alcohol see themselves acting, versus how researchers see it using a ‘Five Factor Model of personality’.

For two weeks before the big experiment, the group recorded what they thought about their personality when drunk as compared to what they were like sober using a detailed questionnaire.

Then the entire group all drank together at the university while being observed.

Drama, drama, drama

As they drank, they played a variety of games designed to provoke a range of personality expressions, including competitiveness, bonding and impulsiveness. 

The participants were asked to report how they thought they were behaving twice during the experiment.

Those who were drinking thought that they were behaving more emotionally unstable and dramatic.

The only category that showed any huge difference was people being more social.

“We were surprised to find such a discrepancy between drinkers’ perceptions of their own alcohol-induced personalities and how observers perceived them,” said Dr Winograd.

“Participants reported experiencing differences in all factors of the Five Factor Model of personality, but extraversion was the only factor robustly perceived to be different across participants in alcohol and sober conditions.”

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