I chose the second option for this chapter’s first impression post. For this prompt, I selected the video that tested whether beer goggles really exist. The popular myth argues that the more alcohol a person consumes, the more attractive other people will appear to that person. In this video, two men and one woman rated several photos of women and men respectively, then proceeded to drink alcohol and re rate the photos. They had five seconds to score each photo, so the ratings were based on gut reactions.
This experiment included a number of strengths, one of which was including both genders in the study to make it more extensive. The subjects of the experiment all received the same amount of alcohol as well, which kept it consistent. The scores the photos received were all averaged, which helped show a trend of the results more clearly. Since the initial rating of photos had to be completed in five seconds, the ratings were based on gut reactions which are often more honest answers. There was a decent amount of photos included in the study, but additional photos could have been included to strengthen the argument.
This experiment also had several weaknesses. The three people performing the study rated a set of photos three separate times, once while sober, another while buzzed, and a final time while drunk. It would make more sense to rate the same set of photos all three times; however, they instead received a new set of photos each time said to be exactly as attractive as the first set of photos. Attractiveness is subjective, so photos of different people cannot be treated as the same photos for an experiment that should be testing the attractiveness of the same people. In the video, it appears that all three test subjects consume the same amount of alcohol, including a beer and a scotch. The amount and combination of alcohol affects people very differently depending on gender, age, previous consumption, tolerance, lifestyle, and many other factors. The challenge is that one person in this experiment may have felt much more drunk than another, which could have influenced the decisions they made when rating photos. They should have used blood alcohol content as the measure to consider each test subject drunk as soon as they reached a certain level. Although each test subject reacted a bit differently in terms of rating photos more generously, the experiment would have been more improved if it included a larger sample. Additionally, there should have been a control group present that either consumed no alcohol or consumed something appearing to be alcohol. If the experiment included another group of people who thought they were consuming alcohol, this could also test whether or not the myth plays more of a role in increasing attractiveness than the actual alcohol does. It is possible that simply being aware of the beer goggles theory would lead someone to find another more attractive if they think they have already had a few beers.
CatherinesCollegeBlog 
Good job with your post Catherine, especially with some of the problems with the experiment. Your point about how alcohol can affect people differently is very important, and represents both a problem of operational definitions and confounding variables. The operational definition is how researchers choose to measure or define something in their experiment. The Mythbusters chose to use amount of alcohol given to the participants, which sounds reasonable, but it creates a problem when what they really want to manipulate with their independent variable is how intoxicated each person is. Because the level of intoxication likely varied from person to person, that is a confounding variable. A confound is something that might influence the results that is not accounted for in the research design. An additional problem with the experiment you didn’t bring up was the sampling process. In order to make conclusions about a population of people, there needs to be a random sample from that population. The participants in this study were not a random sample, so the Mythbusters cannot appropriately apply the results to people in general. I did also want to comment on the issue you raised about which pictures were used. Generally, if the pictures have been rated as being similarly attractive by a large group of people prior to the study, we don’t have to worry about participants’ individual preferences, but that assumes we have a big enough group of participants that these individual preferences average out. With only three people in this study, you’re right that we can’t rule out that one set of photos actually were more attractive in that person’s eyes.
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