Distraction is the Best Way to Calm a Belligerent Drunk

The next time a bar brawl breaks out in your local pub, blame it on the brain, not the beer. A new study, published in the July issue of Psychological Science, has found that it's possible to calm aggressive drunks if they're given a rewarding task that tests their powers of concentration.

A psychologist at the University of Kentucky and his student colleague studied men who were each given three to four orange juice and vodka drinks (screwdrivers), which raised their blood alcohol level over the limit for legal intoxication. The other participants abstained from scientific inebriation, staying sober for the study.

Next, the two groups competed against one another in a stressful game, requiring very quick responses. Every time they lost a round, they received a shock of varying intensity. Similarly, when they won a round they gave their opponent a shock. The idea was to see how alcohol affected the men's aggression, as measured by the kinds of shocks they chose to hand out.

In the next part, researchers required 120 men, some drinkers, some not, to simultaneously perform a difficult memory task. The idea was to see if they could distract those who were "under the influence" from their "hostile" situation. If they could tax their limited powers of concentration, perhaps they wouldn't realize someone was zapping them with electricity.

The tests showed that the highest level of aggression was in the subjects who drank and were zapped but didn't take part in the memory task. The lowest level of aggression was in those who drank with the added distraction. Those who had no alcohol in both labs fell somewhere in the middle.

The sober men were described as cognitively intact and mentally sound, so they could attend to both provocations and distractions, resulting in some level of aggression.

It's no mystery that alcohol severely restricts attention while arousing our aggressive tendencies. This restriction causes us misbehave once our attention is narrowed to the most obvious, attention grabbing thing. A scenario that is played out millions of times a day usually in the form of arguments or hitting on that attractive lady.

The study concludes that coaxing a drunk to pay attention to friendly, healthy and happy thoughts effectively reduces the "cognitive space" available for those havoc wreaking inclinations towards violence.

So, the next time your buddy wants to brawl with his ex-girlfriend's new fling, my advice is to challenge him to a game of checkers and play some Beethoven. Or you can read him this story.

View the abstract here: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01953.x