How beer goggles really DO affect drinkers

IT is a phenomenon many claim to have been afflicted by after a few too many beverages on a wild night out.

Now scientists claim we really do get fooled by so-called ‘beer goggles’ – after a study found only one or two drinks is all it takes to make members of the opposite sex seem more attractive.

People were perceived as plainer before the consumption of only two glasses of wine, researchers found.

Dr John Speakman, a biologist at the University of Aberdeen and co-author of the study, said: ‘We found that alcohol made the individuals less discriminatory against those with high adiposity or fat levels.

‘The more alcohol they had in their circulation, the less plump the five lowestranked [photos] were.’

For the study, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing separated a group of 84 people into groups of drinkers and non-drinkers. The drinkers were given alcohol equivalent to two glasses of wine and the groups were shown 21 images of people with varying body types.

The non-drinkers found the images of people with the highest levels of fat to be the least attractive.

But the drinkers were more inclined to overlook body size when ranking who they thought was the most attractive.

The research, in the International Journal of Obesity, claims the findings may also explain why previous studies have found that hungry men find plumper women more attractive.

The theory was touted that when people lack a resource such as food, they are attracted to someone who appears to have access to this.

But the researchers say it may be that because those men who had eaten had been drinking as well, it affected their ratings of physical attractiveness.