Fasten Your Beergoggles

I wonder, are these the same guys who slip roofies into chicks' drinks? Heh heh.

Alcohol, sex in a memorable relationship Study shows certain men aroused with suggestion of booze
New York TimesTuesday
May 10, 2005

Men who associate alcohol with sexual desire can become sexually stimulated just by being unconsciously exposed to words related to drinking, researchers say.

Writing in the journal Addiction, researchers said the findings offer more evidence about the power of memory when it comes to alcohol. Other studies have found that people who wrongly believe they have been given alcohol can exhibit the effects of drinking.

For this study, Dr. Ronald Friedman of the University of Missouri-Columbia and his colleagues surveyed about 150 male undergraduates about their alcohol use and their views on alcohol and sex.

The students were asked questions like whether having a few drinks would increase their sexual arousal or enjoyment. Then, a month later, they were placed in front of computers, shown a series of letters and asked to say whether they formed words.

What the students did not know was that words like "beer," "keg" and "drunk" were being flashed quickly on the screen and then "masked" with other letters. "You might know you saw something," said a co-author of the study, Dr. Denis McCarthy. But the words were too fleeting to be read consciously.

The students were then asked to look at photographs of 21 young women and rate them for attractiveness.

The researchers found that those students who had earlier expressed a connection between alcohol and arousal were more likely to say a woman was attractive than those men who did not hold similar feelings about alcohol.

What is going on is unclear, the researchers said, but it appears, they wrote, that "the effects of alcohol expectancies on behavior are remarkably subtle and far-reaching."