Alcohol expectations
Main article: Alcohol expectations Although types of alcoholic beverages and social attitudes toward drinking vary around the world, nearly every civilization has independently discovered the processes of brewing beer, fermenting wine, and distilling spiritsAlcohol expectations are beliefs that individuals hold about the effects they experience from drinking. They are largely beliefs about how the consumption of alcohol will affect a person’s emotions, abilities and behaviors. To the extent that alcohol expectancies can be changed, it may be possible to reduce a major social and health problem, that of alcohol abuse.[32]
If people in a society generally believe that intoxication leads to aggression, sexual behavior AKA "beer goggles Beer goggles is a slang term for a phenomenon in which consumption of alcohol lowers sexual inhibitions to the point that very little or no discretion is used when approaching or choosing sexual partners. It can also refer to literal goggle-like devices used to distort vision to simulate the effects of drunkenness", or rowdy behavior, they tend to act that way when intoxicated. If the society teaches that intoxication leads to relaxation and tranquil behavior, it virtually always leads to those outcomes. Alcohol expectations vary within a population so outcomes are not uniform.[33]
People tend to conform to social expectations and a common belief in most societies is that alcohol causes disinhibition. However, in those societies in which people don’t believe that alcohol disinhibits, intoxication virtually never leads to unacceptable behaviors because of “disinhibition”.[34]
Alcohol expectations can operate in the absence of actual consumption of alcohol. Research in the U.S. over a period of decades has shown that men tend to become physically more sexually aroused when they think they have been drinking alcohol, even when they haven't. Women report feeling more sexually aroused when they falsely believe the beverages they have been consuming contain alcohol, although a measure of their physiological arousal shows that they are physically becoming less aroused.
Men tend to become more aggressive in laboratory studies in which they are drinking only tonic water but believe that it contains alcohol. They also become relatively less aggressive when they think they are drinking only tonic water, but are actually drinking tonic containing alcohol.[32]
The phenomenon of alcohol expectations recognizes that intoxication has real physiological consequences affecting perceptions of space and time, reducing psychomotor skills, disrupting equilibrium and a number of other behaviors.[34]
The manner and degree to which alcohol expectations interact with the physiological effects of intoxication to yield the behavior that results is unclear.
<<Table of Contents An alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol . Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits | Next>> | Show All>>
