Personality Trait Reveals Who Becomes a Mean Drunk

Personality Trait Reveals Who Becomes a Mean Drunk - Yahoo! News:

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Drinking can make some people more aggressive, and now researchers have found a particular personality trait — a focus on the present, with little regard of consequences — that appears to make someone under the influence more likely to become mean.

"People who focus on the here and now, without thinking about the impact on the future, are more aggressive than others when they are sober, but the effect is magnified greatly when they're drunk," said lead study researcher Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

"If you carefully consider the consequences of your actions, it is unlikely getting drunk is going to make you any more aggressive than you usually are," Bushman added in a statement.

Alcohol is believed to have a myopic effect, causing drinkers to focus on the most important aspects of a situation while ignoring the more peripheral features. For people prone to concentrate on the here-and-now rather than on consequences, alcohol-induced myopia can exaggerate this tendency, Bushman and colleagues wrote in a study published online Dec. 8 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.