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| -Short Attention Span Theater- | |
| Loud music makes you guzzle | |
| 2008-07-19 | |
To gauge the effect of sound levels on drinking, the team spent three Saturday nights visiting two bars, where they observed 40 men aged between 18 and 25 drinking beer. "We have shown that environmental music played in a bar is associated with an increase in drinking," Nicolas Gueguen, a behavioral sciences researcher at the University of Southern Brittany in France, who led the study, said in a statement. With help from the bars' owners, the team turned the music up and down and then recorded how much and how fast people drank. The men did not know they were being observed. Louder music spurred more consumption, with the average number of drinks ordered by patrons rising to 3.4 drinks from 2.6 drinks, Gueguen found. The time taken to drink a beer fell to an average 11.45 minutes from 14.51 minutes. The researchers acknowledged some limitations to their study, for example that the experiment was on a small scale and could not be applied to every bar. They said it was not clear why louder music appeared to increase alcohol consumption but said it might make conversation more difficult, forcing people to drink more and talk less. | |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 A million years ago, in college, I read a survey of bar owners who reported on which audiences drank most. IIRC, R&B/Blues audiences drank most while Jazz fans tended to nurse drinks. Rock, folk, etc., all fell in between. The problem is controlling for so many variables such as age, price, clientle's regular drinking habits, etc. "We serve hard drinks here for guys who wanna get drunk fast and we don't need no characters to give the joint atmosphere!" --Nick, owner/operator of Nicks, Pottersville, NY. |
| Posted by: JDB 2008-07-19 12:56 |
| #1 YES! Pump up the jams and pass me a cold one. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-07-19 12:41 |