Present-focused people get more aggressive when drunk: study

People who lack one particular personality trait -- the ability to consider the future consequences of current actions -- become more aggressive after heavy drinking, according to a new research.

But people with the trait don’t get any more aggressive when drunk than they would when they're sober.

“People who focus on the here and now, without thinking about the impact on the future, are more aggressive than others when they are sober, but the effect is magnified greatly when they're drunk,” said Brad Bushman, lead author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

“If you carefully consider the consequences of your actions, it is unlikely getting drunk is going to make you any more aggressive than you usually are,” he explained.

Bushman said it makes sense that alcohol would make present-focused people more aggressive.

The study involved 495 adults, with an average age of 23, who were social drinkers.

“The less people thought about the future, the more likely they were to retaliate, but especially when they were drunk. People who were present-focused and drunk shocked their opponents longer and harder than anyone else in the study,” Bushman noted.

“Alcohol didn’t have much effect on the aggressiveness of people who were future-focused,” he said.

Men were more aggressive than women overall, but the effects of alcohol and personality were similar in both sexes. In other words, women who were present-focused were still much more aggressive when drunk than were women who were future-focused, just like men.

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