Drunk Eyewitnesses Are Just As Reliable As Sober Eyewitnesses
Vodka Screwdriver Wikimedia CommonsWould you trust the testimony of a witness who admitted to being drunk while observing a crime? You should. A new study from the psychology department of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden sought to discover whether alcohol consumption really does lessen your ability to observe and remember. There's already an interesting theory about this--it's called alcoholic myopia theory, and it posits that when under the influence of alcohol, people actually pay more attention to environmental cues judged to be salient, and less attention to environmental cues that aren't salient. But the findings actually contradicted this theory. Three groups of testers were chosen, and given either plain orange juice, orange juice with enough vodka to reach a 0.04 percent blood alcohol concentration, or orange juice with enough vodka to reach a 0.07 percent blood alcohol level (the latter being just under the legal driving limit in the...