Researchers have established that having just one drink makes one look more attractive and could help you stand out from a crowd comprising of heavily boozed individuals.
The findings are result of a small study conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol wherein they photographed faces of 40 students before they had a drink, after one drink – equivalent to 250 ml of wine at 14 per cent alcohol for a person weighing 70kg – and after a second drink of the same volume and strength.
The study, published in journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, found that mildly-intoxicated people were rated as better-looking after just one drink compared to when they were sober. However, the scale of beauty stops there on just one drink as the attractiveness index doesn’t grow with the number of drinks.
There is not definite reason why having just a small amount of alcohol makes one look beautiful but researchers of the study propose several ideas including pupil dilation, muscle relaxation, increased blood flow to the cheeks among other things.
“The people who had consumed a small amount of alcohol had a slightly rosier complexion” than they did in their sober and high-dose photos, said the study’s senior researcher, Marcus Munafò, a professor of biological psychology at the University of Bristol as quoted by Live Science. “Rosiness is attractive because it characterizes good physical health characteristics.”
“It suggests that, if it’s true, people are rated as more attractive once they’ve consumed a small amount of alcohol,” Munafò added. “But if they go on to consume more alcohol, they’re no longer rated as more attractive.”
Researchers stress that they are not advocating that alcohol is healthy through their research, but they intend to show that “alcohol is sort of hijacking that mechanism, or promoting the aspects of facial features that we regard as attractive for other reasons.”
