This mini-myth is over an idea that is prominent in many movies, TV shows, and human lives. Do beer goggles really exist? To answer this much speculated question, the Mythbusters created an experiment where they ranked people based on their looks when they were sober, buzzed and drunk in order to see if the more they drank, the more attractive the opposite sex became.
While the experiment posed a very interesting question, there were a few weaknesses I noticed. The first one was the lack of people. Only three subjects were used during the experiment, two male and one female. I believe they should use a larger amount of people for the test so their results can be more generalized. The three that were used in the experiment also knew exactly what the study was looking for, which means that the test could have been subject to their own personal biases. To fix this, I think the experiment should have been done with people who didn’t know exactly what question the Mythbusters were trying to answer. In the buzzed and drunk rounds, the people that were being ranked were exchanged with people that others decided were of equal attractiveness. What if the participants in the experiment didn’t think that the new set of people were as attractive as the first? They should have used the same people throughout the entire test so that there could be no variation in the rankings other than what was caused by the alcohol. In addition, Jamie pointed out himself that with the limited amount of time the participants had to rate the pictures, it was a gut reaction and could be somewhat inconsistent. He also said that they solved that issue with the averaging system, which I believe was a strength of the experiment.
While the experiment was okay, the results were a little to varying in my opinion. With more tests, I believe the Mythbusters could come up with a much more solid answer.
Introduction
Hello, my name is Kirstin and I am currently a freshman here at AC hoping to major in Anthropology. To me, Psychology is the study of what people do and why they do it. As an aspiring Anthropologist, I feel that taking a class about the inner-workings of a person could be very useful for me in the future. Some of the topics I’m looking forward to learning about in this class are personality and culture, coping with stress and social roles and conformity. On the flip side of that, I am not so much looking forward to brain structures and classical and operant conditioning…although that could just be because I don’t know exactly what those topics will comprise of. There’s not necessarily one question that I hope to have answered by the end of this class. I’m really just looking forward to having a better idea of what psychology is and applying the knowledge to my major.
Wren Thoughts 