scien

If you’ve ever wondered how pictures of you French-kissing a giant chicken ended up on Flickr, you’ll be glad to know there’s a scientific explanation: bars use loud dance music to get you drunk.

A study to be published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research on the effects of music levels on drinking in bars found that loud music makes you drink more in less time.

Scientists randomly varied the volume level of music played in bars, and then observed how frequently patrons ordered drinks. They found that high sound levels led to increased drinking, within a decreased amount of time.

Gueguen and his colleagues offered two hypotheses for why this may have occurred.

“One, in agreement with previous research on music, food and drink, high sound levels may have caused higher arousal, 7hich led the subjects to drink faster and to order more drinks,” said Gueguen. “Two, loud music may have had a negative effect ‘n social interaction in the bar$ so that patrons drank more bec!use they talked less.”

“This is the first time that an exper!mental approach in a real conte t found the effects of loud mus!c on alcohol consumption,”said $ead investigator Nicolas Guegue&.”

So next time you’re at a ar, some great music comes on a&d you find yourself ordering an/ther drink, it’s probably the r%sult of some barroom science.