After a night out with a lot of booze, it’s not uncommon to blame any mishaps on our drunk personality.
Although there’s some truth to the boozed alter ego making us act differently than we usually do, science threw some spanner in the works.
One of the most popular ideas concerning alcohol is that we transform into different people.
However, this new finding indicates that alcohol doesn’t have the power to change our personality drastically. It seems that our drunk self is nothing more than our real selves.
Here’s how the researchers came to this conclusion.
Your Drunk You Is the Real You, Says a Study
For the purposes of the study, the team analyzed and compared the drinker’s own perceptions of themselves while drunk with the observations made by sober others.
They concluded that drunk or sober, a person acts similarly.
According to psychological scientists Rachel Winograd from University of Missouri, St Louis, they were quite surprised by finding such big discrepancy between the drinker’s own perception for their alcohol-induced personalities and that of observers.
The participants reported differences in all factors of the 5 Factor Model of personality; however, extraversion was the sole factor robustly perceived differently across the participants in their sober and under-the-influence conditions.
How Was the Study Conducted?
The 156 volunteers were quizzed and asked to describe their usual consumption of alcohol and to describe how they perceive their sober vs. their drunk personalities.
The volunteers divided in groups of 3 or 4 friends were asked to consume enough alcohol to increase the level of it in the blood to around 90 mg (the legal limit is 80 mg).
Over 15 minutes, some consumed Sprite whereas others had Sprite and vodka. Then, they were asked to complete several games, tasks, and activities to express their personalities.
The group of sobers watched and rated the personality of each person for their traits and openness to experiences.
The volunteers said how they believed they had a change in personality after alcohol consumption.
However, the observers noticed fewer differences between their sober and drunk personalities, except in the extraversion trait.
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