Alcohol has little effect on men's age perception
Alcohol has little effect on men's age perception
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Monday, 20, Apr 2009 08:04
Drinking alcohol has little effect on men's ability to guess a woman's age, new research claims.
The study, published in the British Journal of Psychology, asked 240 people to look at photos of women and comment on their age.
All the participants were heterosexual, aged between 18 and 70, with an equal split between men and women, and half of the participants had consumed alcohol before the task.
The participants looked at photographs of ten young women (aged 17). Some of the photographs were digitally altered to give the faces a younger or older appearance and in both some make-up was applied digitally.
The results showed that drinking alcohol and use of make-up had a minimal effect on the men's perception of the ages of the photographed women.
Men accused of having unlawful sex with a minor can claim on 'reasonable grounds' they were not aware that the girl was underage, but the authors of today's report claim alcohol consumption does not interfere with age perception.
Dr Vincent Egan from the University of Leicester, said: "This study suggests that alcohol consumption and make-up use do not interfere with how old we perceive someone to be.
"Another interesting finding was that overall participants who drank alcohol actually rated all the women in the photos as less attractive (compared to the participants who hadn't drunk alcohol). This seemingly flies in the face of the commonly held notion of 'beer goggles'."