Beer Goggles Explained

“Everyone looks better after you’ve tipped back a pint or two, and now we may know why.” Discovery News says that our ability to detect facial symmetry—a metric of beauty—diminishes. “It turns out that alcohol dulls our ability to recognize cockeyed, asymmetrical faces, according to researchers who tested the idea on both sober and inebriated college students in England. ‘We tend to prefer faces that are symmetrical,’ explained Lewis Halsey of Roehampton University in London. That’s well established by previous research, he said.” A lingering question the study leaves is: If people are less able to recognize facial symmetry while intoxicated, what other visual cues might they miss out on?