We all know that one person who acts way more drunk than they actually are.

They proudly announce at the beginning of the evening that they have an early-morning wake up call, and they’ll stay away from anything that comes in a shot glass, but by the end of the night they act way more wasted than anyone else and everyone is hella confused.

Here’s the thing, though, you’ve probably done the same. According to a study, it is suggested that we base our levels of intoxication on how drunk the people around us are.

The amount of alcohol we have consumed has nothing to do with it.

Breathalysing 1 862 people with an average age of 27 in British pubs on a Friday and Saturday night, researchers then gave them a questionnaire to complete. In it, they had to rate their drunkenness and extreme drinking. The two sets of data were compared against each other to find that:

Whilst intoxicated and in drinking environments, people base judgements regarding their drinking on how their level of intoxication ranks relative to that of others […] around them, not on their actual levels of intoxication.

Researchers are wanting to use this data to lower excessive drinking and alcohol-induced anti-social behaviour.

Co-author of the study and professor in public health research, Simon Moore, explained:

We know that as the number of pubs and clubs increase in an area, you tend to see more alcohol-related harm. Coupled with our findings, I think we would suggest that altering the mix of venues, that is bring more sober people into the night time environment, might help.

Further research is needed to test the theory that the presence of sober people in an area would affect the behaviour of those drinking.

Imagine that, a sober person in a nightclub.

[source:munchies]