Going for a night out and getting hammered is a great old pastime. We’ve been doing it for millennia. Some of us know our limits and sip one or two whiskeys and call it night. Some of us need a bottle of wine just to get going. Some of us don’t even care.
Bars and bartenders are the unsung heroes of your free-spirited bacchanal. They gently coax an atmosphere and evening along with the light to heavy administering of booze. The illusion of the patron’s control is crucial. But it is just that, an illusion. Bartenders know when to serve you, when to turn the music up that skosh, and when the condom machine is going to need replenishing.
Recently some science-y folks at the University of Cambridge and some bartenders got together in England to test our limits of perception at drinking from differently-sized glasses and how the average tipple tipper would react.
Over the course of several months the bartenders rotated different wine glasses to alter the appearance of how much wine the patron perceived they were being served. They did not alter the amount of wine being poured.
Turns out, serving wine in smaller glasses had no measurable effect. But the large glasses, they boosted wine sales 10%. Even after controlling for day of week, temperature, holidays, and so on.
Patrons perceived that they were drinking less by being served in larger glasses. So they ordered more. Yup. It’s really that simple. And bartenders do it all the time. That’s why shots come in shot glasses and not pints. You’re taking the whole one, not a sip. Thus, you’re more satisfied.
Good bars have very specific glasses they use for drinks. A dry martini is really just 4 ounces of alcohol. That basically equals 1/3 of a beer volume-wise. In a Nick-and-Nora or Cocktail glass, that looks like a full, big drink. You put that into a double old-fashioned glass, you are going to think you’re getting stiffed.
But why is this even important? Drinking is fun, damn it!
Well, the study is looking into lowering over-consumption of alcohol, which is ranked 5th as a cause of disease and death. Now, we need a drink.
Further investigations need to establish the contexts in which the strongest effects are likely to occur, including the extent to which these results might extend to in-home alcohol consumption. While further research is needed to establish the reliability of these findings – and in particular, explore the use of different glass sizes – the results offer initial evidence that reducing the use of larger glasses may reduce consumption of alcohol.
The study aims to provide alcohol licensers with a litmus for which they can serve alcohol in a way that won’t trick us into over-consumption. Because, like it or not, it’s really, really bad for us.
Our suggestions is to listen to your bartender. They know their craft. And they know when to cut you off. That all being said, the less scrupulous barkeeps out there now know a way to get you to drink more.
(via Scientific American)
