Study: Loud bar = more drinking
Sunday, August 17th, 2008My friends and I like to hang out at a beer bar a few blocks down the street from the Mid-South Alcoholic Supply World Headquarters. There we had a running argument with one of the managers for several months. “It’s too loud in here!” we’d tell him. “We’re standing right next to each other, and we can’t hear each other talk because the music is so loud! This isn’t a nightclub!”
“What?” he’d ask, unable to hear us over the music.
We eventually won that battle, but according to this Scientific American podcast, the manager may have had his reasons for turning it up so high. A study was done in a couple of test bars, and the results indicated that patrons drank more when the music was turned way up. The reasons behind the results were not indicated. The authors speculated that maybe the loud music gave patrons more energy, or maybe they drank more because it was all that was left to do, since they couldn’t hear each other talk.
