Graduate student Abigail Riemer with colleagues Michelle Haikalis, Molly Franz, Mike Dodd, David DiLillo, and Sarah Gervais, recently published “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beer Holder: An Initial Investigation of the Effects of Alcohol, Attractiveness, Warmth, and Competence on the Objectifying Gaze in Men" in the journal Sex Roles. We sat down with Abbey to learn more.
What excited you about doing this study?
Almost everyone has heard a story of regret involving the concept of “beer goggles” – when being intoxicated leads us to see others as more attractive than when we are sober. Yet, not a lot of research has examined how men view women when they are intoxicated. Working on this project excited me because we were able to experimentally examine the influence of alcohol on men’s perceptions of women, and divulge what it really means when men are wearing “beer goggles”.
What were your research questions?
Women are commonly viewed through a narrow sexually objectifying lens in which their sexualized body and body parts are considered capable of representing them. The objectifying gaze—looking more at women’s body parts rather than their faces—is a common manifestation of this objectification. For women, objectifying gazes lead to a host of negative consequences, so we sought to examine factors that led men to exhibit objectifying gazes toward women. Previous research examining the influence of alcohol on perceptions has revealed that intoxication leads to a narrowed focus, so we examined whether consuming alcohol would lead men to take a narrow focus when looking at women. We were particularly interested in how women’s appearance and personality attributes may further narrow intoxicated men’s gaze to their sexualized body parts.
How did you test them?
We brought male students into the lab and asked them to consume either an alcoholic beverage made from a ratio of orange juice and alcohol designed to get their blood alcohol content up to the legal limit of .08, or a placebo beverage of orange juice with trivial amounts of alcohol designed to give the impression the drink could have been alcoholic. Then, we set the participants up on an eye-tracker so we could measure the length of time they spent looking at the faces, chests, and waists of pictured women.
What did you find?
Because we were interested in men’s objectifying gazes, we examined the time participants spent looking at women’s sexualized body parts – their chests and waists. When men drank alcohol they were more likely to objectify women compared to men who consumed a placebo beverage. We also found that although men were more likely to objectify women who were highly attractive, increases in women’s perceived warmth and competence decreased men’s objectifying gazes. Furthermore, we found that the men who were intoxicated objectified women who were low in perceived warmth and competence more than men who were sober.
What are the practical implications of your findings?
This work paints a more nuanced picture of “beer goggles.” Men did not find women more attractive when they were intoxicated, but instead men were more likely to objectify women who were perceived as less friendly or less intelligent by looking less at their faces and more at their sexualized body parts compared to men who were sober. These findings have real world implications, especially in environments where alcohol consumption is common, like college campuses. While a lot of research has identified connections between alcohol use and sexual assault, this work may suggest objectification that results from intoxication may contribute to men’s misperceptions of women’s sexual interest and related sexual aggression. Hopefully the results from this work can help to challenge maladaptive beliefs held by some men, such as that objectifying women when drunk, or that gazes directed toward certain women are acceptable.
Riemer, A.R. et al (2017). Beauty is in the Eye of the Beer Holder: An Initial Investigation of the Effects of Alcohol, Attractiveness, Warmth, and Competence on the Objectifying Gaze in Men, Sex Roles, published online. DOI: 10.1007/s11199-017-0876-2