Being Drunk Doesn’t Change Your Personality As Much As You Think

Most people believe that when they're buzzed or drunk, their personality changes. They become the life of the party, or they have more fun. Well, alcohol doesn't change your personality as much as you might think.

A new study from the Association for Psychological Science claims the following:

People typically report substantive changes to their personality when they become intoxicated, but observations from outsiders suggest less drastic differences between 'sober' and 'drunk' personalities, according to new research.

Researchers from the University of Missouri-St. Louis looked at 5 different traits:

• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Openness
• Conscientiousness
• Neuroticism

Of these five traits, only one actually was affected by alcohol. And that would be EXTROVERSION. Yup, when you drink, you are more outgoing.

"We were surprised to find such a discrepancy between drinkers' perceptions of their own alcohol-induced personalities and how observers perceived them," says psychological scientist Rachel Winograd of the University of Missouri, St. Louis -- Missouri Institute of Mental Health.

Now this isn't to say that the other traits weren't affected by alcohol. They just weren't as much as people thought.