Noise, booze and your wallet?

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on July 28, 2008  
Filed Under Work Behaviour

What do noise, booze and your wallet have in common?  The answer is volume. More noise makes you drink more, which in turn empties your wallet faster. A recent study of the effects of music levels on drinking in a bar setting has found that loud music leads to more drinking in less time.

You probably think that your favourite drinking hole has known about this fact for years, particularly on payday. Commercial venues are very aware of the effects that the environment — in this case, music — can have on in-store traffic flow, sales volumes, product choices, and consumer time spent in the immediate vicinity.

“Previous research had shown that fast music can cause fast drinking, and that music versus no music can cause a person to spend more time in a bar,” said Nicolas Gueguen, a professor of behavioural sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France. “This is the first time that an experimental approach in a real context found the effects of loud music on alcohol consumption.”

Researchers discretely visited two bars for three Saturday evenings. The study subjects, 40 males 18 to 25 years of age, were unaware that they were being observed; only those who ordered a glass of draft beer were included. With permission from the bar owners, observers would randomly manipulate the sound levels of the music in the bar.

Results showed 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, which led the subjects to drink faster and to order more drinks,” said Gueguen. “Two, loud music may have had a negative effect on social interaction in the bar, so that patrons drank more because they talked less.”

So, if you want to empty your wallet faster on pay day, drink where the noise is loudest, or talk less. Alternatively, choose quieter drinking holes where you can communicate more effectively with colleagues.

Reference

Guéguen, N., Jacob, C., Le Guellec, H., Morineau, T. & Lourel, M. (2008). Sound level of Environmental music and drinking behavior: A field experiment with beer drinkers. Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. (available in Early View).


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