Following the excesses of the holidays, many of us have opted for a Dry January. One reader tells me she hopes to keep cutting back on her drinking after the month ends, but she is worried about socialising. Alcohol raised her confidence with others and she is nervous about living without booze to lubricate her interactions.
I imagine this is a very common concern, but a of 342 US college students by at the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues might help to allay these worries. Through a series of phone interviews over four two-week periods, the team built a picture of participants鈥� expectations of the ways their drinking would make them feel and their actual experiences.
鈥淥n afternoons students reported expecting more subjective positive alcohol-related effects to occur, they were more likely to report experiencing those same effects later in the day as a result of drinking,鈥� the researchers concluded. The results suggest that much of alcohol鈥檚 positive effects 鈥� including the increased self-assurance 鈥� arise from a self-fulfilling prophecy, a fact that remained true even when the researchers controlled for the quantity of alcohol consumed.
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The team鈥檚 findings chime with the results of a by at Grenoble Alpes University in France and his colleagues. Participants were first given a strong-tasting grapefruit and grenadine drink, and then asked to record a video of a speech promoting the product. Afterwards, they rated how bright, original, attractive and funny they believed they had been in the clip.
Here鈥檚 the twist. Half the drinks contained alcohol, while the others were zero per cent. Crucially, the labelling was deceptive 鈥� so some people thought they were drinking a cocktail when they were really drinking a mocktail, and vice versa. Those expectations tended to matter more than alcohol content in determining how confident participants felt.
Perhaps most reassuringly for my reader, B猫gue also asked judges to rate how well they believed the participants had performed 鈥� and the presence of alcohol made no difference.
Together, these results should help us recognise that we needn鈥檛 depend on alcohol as a social crutch: the chemical itself isn鈥檛 necessary to release our inhibitions. I find this interesting in light of research on 鈥渙pen-label placebos鈥�, where people often benefit from a dummy pill despite knowing that they aren鈥檛 taking the active substance. There is something about the ritual that seems to work 鈥� and that may be equally true with our perceptions of chemical courage.
Whatever your tipple, it is worth remembering builds with practice. Teetotal or not, we can all raise a glass to our capacity for growth. Cheers!
