WHILE MANY DRINKS get by on their taste, the smell of fermented alcohol can be enough to make it harder to resist, new research says.

The study, published in the Psychopharmacology journal, shows that people can smell alcohol itself.

Researchers at Edge Hill University had participants wear face masks laced with either an alcoholic or non-alcoholic facemask. They were they asked to press a button every time the letter K or a bottle of beer flashed on the screen.

The researchers measured the number of times the participants incorrectly pressed the button causing a ‘false alarm’. These false alarms indicate a reduction in the participant’s power to inhibit their behaviour when they were expected to.

Dr Rebecca Monk, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill University said that she and her fellow researchers found that the number of these ‘false alarms’ were higher in participants who were wearing the alcohol treated mask.

We know that alcohol behaviours are shaped by our environment including who we’re with and the settings in which we drink.

“This research is a first attempt to explore other triggers, such as smell, that may interfere with people’s ability to refrain from a particular behaviour. For example, during the experiment it seemed that just the smell of alcohol was making it harder for participants to control their behaviour to stop pressing a button.”

Fellow researcher and Edge Hill Professor, Derek Heim elaborated, saying that studies of this nature could further our understanding of addiction and substance abuse.

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