The term "Beer Goggles" is the phenomenon that people find other people more attractive after having had a few drinks. The term is especially used for people who, when one is sober, will otherwise not be found as relatively attractive or attractive at all.
History
The term "beer goggles" was first coined in the United States in the 1980s by male university students. In addition, the first printed version of the phrase was found in Playboy magazine in January 1987 titled "The Let's Get Practical Fashion Award: To Georgetown for its beer goggles". By the 1990s it had spread to the United Kingdom and is found in the Evening Chronicle stating "... but by the time I had my beer goggles on. After the ale I'd supped, they were looking like super-models". Lastly, the term "beer goggles" is found in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a plural noun defined as "the effects of alcohol thought of metaphorically as a pair of goggles that alter a person's perceptions especially by making others appear more attractive than they actually are.
Science behind alcohol and perceived attraction
Drinking alcohol can have several effects on both the body and the brain. These effects include but are not limited to impaired judgement, lowered social inhibitions, poor decision-making, aggressive behaviors and risky sexual behavior.
First, alcohol enters the bloodstream through the gastrointestinal tract and the amount absorbed varies based on several factors such as genetic makeup, weight, muscle-to-fat ratio, food present and any medical conditions.
Once in the bloodstream, the body acts as a central nervous system depressant meaning it slows down how fast brain cells and nerves communicate with the rest of the body. This impacts both the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. The limbic system produces emotions such as fear or anxiety. This reduction in the limbic system is why people feel less socially awkward when drinking. The pre-frontal cortex is responsible for cognitive processing such as reasoning and judgement. This reduction in the pre-fontal cortex function is why people's inhibitions and judgements are lowered. The combination of lowered inhibitions and impaired judgement can lead people to think when under the influence that one is attractive.
Lastly, there are several studies demonstrating that drinking increases risky sexual behavior, the likelihood of having casual partners and less consistent condom use. This is because alcohol also decreases the function of both the cerebral cortex and frontal lobes. One of the functions of the cerebral cortex is receiving information from one's senses and environment while the frontal lobe is responsible for voluntary movement. Suppression of the cerebral cortex leads to lowered inhibitions while suppression of the frontal lobes leads to less control of one's emotions or urges causing potential aggression.
Research
There are many studies about whether "beer goggles" is a real thing, in other words if drinking truly makes people perceive other people to be more attractive.
One of the first studies on the topic of "beer goggles" was done in 2003 which took 80 heterosexual college students to a bar, served drinks and then showed them pictures of people of the opposite sex. It was found that compared to the sober group, those that were served alcohol found people on average more attractive.
To explore whether the "beer goggles" phenomenon was only found in humans, researchers at Pennsylvania State University explored mating habits in fruit flies exposed to alcohol. The study concluded that flies who were chronically exposed to alcohol were less choosy when mating with female fruit flies and more forward than those who were not exposed to alcohol.
In 2013, a study titled "Beauty in the eye of the beer holder" was done to measure how alcohol consumption affected self-perception of attractiveness, and it was found that those who drank alcohol and were told they drank alcohol gave themselves more positive self ratings than those who didn't.
Another study in 2012 analyzed the effects of combining alcohol with cigarettes and found that this enhances the "beer goggles" effect, causing the highest ratings of attraction compared to those who had just consumed alcohol.