A very drunk person may simply be incapable of experiencing normal emotions until they sober up. They may experience emotions and be unable to tell them apart, they may experience emotions and misinterpret them, and they may simply not experience emotions except either happiness or rage. This results in instances where drunks experience happiness and become bubbly, grief, or lust and they overreact when compared to their sober selves.
So, someone may start a violent assault after someone else spills beer on them. They quite simply have very little control over emotions. Reduced inhibition directly tracks to total alcohol consumption, with users who drink more consistently showing less inhibition, further mental debilitation and increased motor control debilitation.
Light drinkers typically show moderate impairment to inhibition, but little else. Moderate to heavy drinkers experience working memory problems , preventing them from implementing working memory to rationalize moral, safety, and legal decisions that would be easy when sober.
So, heavy drinking impairs inhibition and working memory, meaning that rationalizing any decision becomes difficult. In social situations, this same process effects how people are able to determine if something is socially acceptable to say, acceptable to that person, or acceptable to them.
So, they might tell a truth they were trying to hide. They might tell a convenient lie because they lose social context. They might show bigotry or racism. And they might still make good decisions.
Again, this type of impairment can heavily vary between individuals, with some showing little to no ability and others showing only moderate impairment despite having consumed similar quantities of alcohol. Alcohol impacts the brain in a lot of ways. None of them necessarily increase the veracity of what someone says. How can you tell? Hyde group had the most women in it. The rigor of these categories leaves something to be desired—they were somewhat arbitrarily constructed based on the recalled observations of a relatively small number of college students.
Alcoholism is notoriously hard to pin down. If you drink a little every day, is that a problem? What about nothing all week, but 10 beers on Saturday? More studies need to be performed before that can happen, but this one is a start. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Science sheds light on why some people may talk so much when intoxicated, as well as whether people are indeed more honest when drunk.
While alcohol may encourage an individual to express a long-repressed sorrow or grievance that is real and runs deep, it can also cause others to lie. The reason for these uninhibited utterances is the way alcohol affects the brain. In other words, neurotransmitters in the brain slow down and even stop when a person becomes inebriated. One of the reasons people may talk more when drunk is a reduction in negative affect or emotions related to specific behaviors, stress or other adverse effects.
A person with inhibited negative affect often says things without associating them with positive or negative consequences.
Alcohol overloads working memory , impairs judgment, causes primary inhibitory impairment surrounding social situations and affects social rationalization or the ability to tell whether something is socially acceptable. Context can help determine whether drunks mean what they say. For example, heartfelt emotions are often genuine because people lack the rationalization skills to be devious and contriving.
On the other hand, negative comments or anger may be a defense mechanism and not necessarily stem from truth.
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