Submission + - Scientific explanation of why men wasted together (time.com)
Taco Cowboy writes: Men seem to like getting drunk together more than women do and now a group of boffins think they know why
Smiles are contagious in a group of men sitting around drinking alcohol, according to a study announced Tuesday in the journal Clinical Psychological Science. This suggests that booze serves as a social lubricant for men, making them more sensitive to social behaviors, like smiling, and freeing them to connect with one another in a way that a soda can’t
Lest that strike you as laughably obvious, consider this: the effect does not hold if there are any women in the group, according to the study authors
A site note of the research points to the fact that genuine smiles are perfectly contagious among sober women, just not sober men
The authors don’t posit a guess as to why the presence of a woman keeps drunk men from catching smiles from one another, except to say that booze seems to disrupt "processes that would normally prevent them from responding to another person’s smile"
Smiles are contagious in a group of men sitting around drinking alcohol, according to a study announced Tuesday in the journal Clinical Psychological Science. This suggests that booze serves as a social lubricant for men, making them more sensitive to social behaviors, like smiling, and freeing them to connect with one another in a way that a soda can’t
Lest that strike you as laughably obvious, consider this: the effect does not hold if there are any women in the group, according to the study authors
A site note of the research points to the fact that genuine smiles are perfectly contagious among sober women, just not sober men
The authors don’t posit a guess as to why the presence of a woman keeps drunk men from catching smiles from one another, except to say that booze seems to disrupt "processes that would normally prevent them from responding to another person’s smile"
