Smiles are More Contagious for Men Who Drink Alcohol

Can smiles be contagious? They can if you drink more. Scientists found that men who consume an alcoholic beverage are more responsive to the smiles of other in their social group. This suggests that a drink may increase sensitivity to rewarding social behaviors like smiling, and may shed some light on the risk factors that contribute to problem drinking among men.

"This experimental alcohol study, which included a social context, finds the clearest evidence yet of greater alcohol reinforcement for men than women," said Catharine Fairbairn, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Many men report that the majority of their social support and social bonding time occurs within the context of alcohol consumption. We wanted to explore the possibility that social alcohol consumption was more rewarding to men than to women-the idea that alcohol might actually 'lubricate' social interaction to a greater extent among men."

In this case, the researchers randomly assigned 720 healthy social drinkers to groups of three. Each group was then randomly assigned to receive a particular drink: an alcoholic beverage, a non-alcoholic beverage, and a placebo non-alcoholic beverage that was said to be alcoholic. The scientists then observed the participants.

In the end, the scientists found that alcohol significantly increased the contagiousness of smiles, but only for all-male groups. It didn't seem to have a significant effect on emotional contagion for groups that contained any women. This suggests that alcohol is likely to induce a type of "social bravery" among men.

"Historically, neither the scientific community nor the general public has been terribly concerned about drinking that occurs in social settings," said Fairbairn. "According to popular opinion, a 'social drinker' is necessarily a non-problem drinker, despite the fact that the majority of alcohol consumption for both light drinkers and problem drinkers occurs in a social context. Not only that, the need to 'belong' and create social bonds with others is a fundamental human motive. Therefore, social motives may be highly relevant to the understanding of how alcohol problems develop."

The findings are published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.