Loud music pushes drinking at bars

Loud music predisposes people to drink more and to drink more quickly at a bar, according to a study.'Previous research had shown that fast music can cause fast drinking ... and cause a person to spend more time in a bar,' said Nicolas Gueguen, of Universite de Bretagne-Sud, France, co-author ... ...the study.'This is the first time that an experimental approach in a real context found the effects of loud music on alcohol consumption.Researchers discreetly visited two bars for three Saturday evenings in a medium-size city in the west of France. The 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 (either 72 dB, considered normal, or 88 dB, considered high) of the music (top 40 songs) before choosing a participant.After the observed participant left the bar, sound levels were again randomly selected and a new participant was chosen. 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.In France, observed Gueguen, more than 70,000 persons per year die because of chronic alcohol consumption, and alcohol is associated with the majority of fatal car accidents.'We need to encourage bar owners to play music at more of a moderate level ... and make consumers aware that loud music can influence their alcohol consumption,' said Gueguen.

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