The words people use to describe their drinking behavior can say a lot about how they perceive drinking, a perception that may not match reality, researchers say. …
When the number of drinks and behavior made it clear that the person was seriously intoxicated, the students still described the female character with words like tipsy, buzzed and light-headed.
Has the person taking the car keys been drinking, too?
The male character, by contrast, was termed trashed, plowed, plastered, gone and obliterated (plus a few more pungent terms).
This perception of women as moderate drinkers, even when they’re not, could lead women to underestimate their levels of intoxication, according to , a research scientist at the University of Buffalo who led the study. “It’s certainly easy to imagine a situation where they drive after leaving a bar, where they are too intoxicated to drive,” he says.
