Why you can’t blame alcohol for bad behaviour: It doesn’t alter personality

MANY of us try to blame our bad behaviour on simply having too many drinks.

But it turns out that the excuse of becoming a ‘different person’ when we drink is just a myth.

Psychologists have found our personalities barely change at all, and that we simply lose our inhibitions and become more extroverted.

During a test, where participants drank four cocktails over 15 minutes, US researchers observed that their sober and inebriated personalities stayed much the same. It may be the case that people simply expect to become different when they are drunk, or that the changes are all in their heads.

Study leader Dr Rachel Winograd, from the University of Missouri, said: ‘There may be a small subset of people who turn into someone completely different when they are drunk, and this may suggest an alcohol problem, but on the whole, most people do not.

‘They instead experience shifts in perception and mood, which may not be observable.

‘We saw people laughing louder, making jokes, doing funny dances, which they would likely not have done sober. But this does not mean that if people behave badly when very drunk, that they are not responsible.’