Beer Drinkers Can Read Your Emotions; Study Finds

Commonly as people know, alcohol usually destroys people's intuition. Sometimes it even causes riots and for severe alcohol abuse, it can cause death. But, for some people, they drink alcohol to socialize, stress relief or for parties. Thus, a new study shows that one type of alcohol can help you read emotions of others.

Beer, research shows that this kind of alcohol allows people to tell certain emotions from others. A team of researchers from the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland conducted an experimental survey to study this type of behavior.

The researchers gathered 60 volunteers aging between 18 to 50 years old. They were given beer which is alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Within 15 minutes, the volunteers already finish an average of 17 ounces of beer. However, the amount of beer that was given to them will allow them to be drunk but not too drunk for them to undergo the study, as reported by Live Science.

Meanwhile, the volunteers were not aware of whether the beer that they are drinking is non-alcoholic or alcoholic. In a span of 30 minutes, the alcohol is taking effect, so the researchers begin their survey. The participants were shown images of six kinds of emotions such as sadness, disgust, surprise, fear, and happiness the experts then ask them to determine the emotion represented.

The result was presented last Sept. 19 in the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) at Vienna. The findings show that people who were given the alcoholic beer were better in recognizing faces that show happiness of those people who drank the non-alcoholic beer. The findings were published in the journal Psychopharmacology.

In line with this Professor Matthias Liechti lead researcher of the study shares that "We found that drinking a glass of beer helps people see happy faces faster, and enhances concern for positive emotional situations, these effects of alcohol on social cognition likely enhance sociability,"  according to Science Daily.