Even one pint of beer can make you feel out of control

Jun 22, 2019

New Delhi, Jun 23 (ANI): A recent study showed that drinking only one pint of beer or a large glass of wine is enough to significantly compromise a person's sense of agency, a feeling of being in control of our actions. This feeling is an important aspect of human social behavior, as it implies knowledge of the consequences of those actions, reported the study published in the Journal of Addiction Biology. In the experiments, subjects drank cocktail containing doses of alcohol proportional to their BMI to produce blood alcohol concentrations within the legal limits for driving in England and Wales. These doses of alcohol, corresponding to one or two pints of beer, produced tighter binding between voluntary actions and sensory stimuli. This suggested that small amounts of alcohol might exaggerate the sense of agency, leading to overconfidence in one's driving ability and to inappropriate, potentially dangerous behavior.