I was reading a Scientific American study on The Effects of Alcohol on Social Behavior. I wanted to see if there was any scientific evidence/controlled statistic on how drinking alcohol makes you a more socially active person, etc.

Alcohol Theory #1 : Alcohol Myopia

Perhaps the best overall theoretical framework for understanding the effects of alcohol on social cognition and behavior is offered by the psychologist Claude Steel, currently at Stanford University. The clearest presentation of Steele’s “alcohol myopia” theory can be found in a 1990 essay from American Psychologist with Robert Josephs of the University of Michigan. Steele and Josephs write that intoxication causes, “a state of shortsightedness in which superficially understood, immediate aspects of experience have a disproportionate influence on behavior and emotion, a state in which we can see the tree, albeit more dimly, but miss the forest altogether.” '

Alcohol Theory #2 : Existential Life Thinking

“Apparently,” the researchers write, “[alcohol] acts to allow or encourage [people] to think in contrasting terms about large or existential life issues. One can think of these…. as indicating a yearning for reflecting on some of life’s basic issues (success-failure, life-death, pleasure-unpleasure, etc.) which is encouraged or released by alcohol in small quantities under social conditions.” For example, a wet participant wrote in response to the “ski jumper in midair” image: “Paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

Read the study here.