I'll Have What He's Having: Drinking Pals Mimic Alcoholic Drink Orders

Pairs of drinking buddies at a laboratory designed to look like a bar were observed mimicking their partner's drinking behaviors, but were adamant that they were not influenced by their partner's choices.

The research, conducted at University of Liverpool's bar laboratory, invited 46 pairs of friends to the bar lab in order to partake in study on "social problem solving."

When the pair arrived, one of them was secretly told that the aim of the study was test whether friends' drink choices had an influence on individual drink selection, and instructed to either order alcoholic drinks throughout the session, or stick to only soft drinks.

The experiment was rigged so that the in-the-know participant was always asked to place their drink order first.

The researchers found that 80 percent of people whose partner chose to drink alcoholic drinks also selected an alcoholic drink for themselves. Interestingly, the participants who were secretly instructed to order only soft drinks did not have the same effect, only 30 percent of these people's drinking partners mimicked them.

Overall, however, only 19 percent of people said that their partner's drink choice influenced their own.

University of Liverpool researchers contend that by making drinking alcohol a socially acceptable behavior, the partners were able to influence their friends' drink choice without them being aware of it.

"Social pressure can have an enormous effect on people's drinking habits," said Eric Robinson from the university's Institute of Psychology. "As we've shown in this study, friends can influence our behavior without us even realizing it's happening and this has implications for people who are looking to cut down their drinking."

The researchers admitted, however, that they were unable to tell if people did not genuinely know if they were copying their friend's behavior. Robinson said when the subjects were confronted about it, their reaction could have been one of embarrassment rather than a genuine response.

The university-funded research is published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research