For the first time, researchers have shown that watching characters knock back a beer or quaff other alcoholic beverages in films, TV shows or advertisements can have an immediate effect on how much viewers imbibe themselves.
A study by researchers in the Netherlands and Canada found that young males who watched films and commercials prominently featuring alcohol drank twice as much beer or wine on average as those who saw movies and TV ads in which booze was less evident.
“I think that many people are not aware of the fact that if you’re exposed to alcohol cues, or even smoking cues, in movies [and] on television that it might affect your behaviour immediately,” said principal investigator Rutger Engels, a professor of developmental psychopathology at Radboud University, in the Dutch city of Nijmegen.
The study, published online Wednesday in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, involved 80 male university students, 18 to 29, randomly assigned to one of four groups. Participants watched films and commercials in a comfortable “home cinema” set up in a laboratory, with access to a fridge containing alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
One group of 20 watched the film American Pie, in which characters downed alcoholic drinks 18 times and booze was displayed another 23 times; a commercial break included alcohol ads. A second group viewed American Pie plus a commercial break with no alcohol ads.
The third group watched the film 40 Days and 40 Nights, in which alcohol was consumed three times, alcoholic beverages were shown 15 times and the commercial break included booze ads. The final group saw the same movie, but their commercial break had no plugs for intoxicants.
Over a one-hour period, students exposed to alcohol in both the film and commercials polished off an average of nearly three 200ml bottles of alcohol, while those who watched “non-alcoholic” films and ads consumed 1.5 bottles on average.
Robert Mann, a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, said the study is the first to provide clear evidence of a causal relationship between viewing depictions of alcohol consumption and alcohol ads and subsequent alcohol consumption, at least in young males.
“Certainly if you’re concerned about potential health impacts of advertising, you need that kind of causal information to really think about what you might do to prevent any harmful effects of the advertising,” said Mann, who was not involved in the study.
“So the study, I think, is very significant in providing some evidence that those links are there and perhaps we need to be concerned about them. On the other hand, it’s one study and it’s also going to be important for us to replicate these findings and see how generalizable they are.”
