Loud music in bars leads to more drinking research finds

Reuters HealthDay reported on July 18, 2008 on a study which will be in the October, 2008 issue of the journal, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research which found that people drink more in bars that play loud music. Here is a snippet from the Reuters' article:

If busy bars and blasting music seem to go hand in hand, new research from France suggests that might be because loud music encourages more drinking.

The finding is reported in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, and is drawn from research led by Nicolas Gueguen, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France.

"This is an informative and good study that I think a lot of people will identify with, because it makes a lot of sense," said Dr. Marc Galanter, director of the division of alcoholism and drug abuse at the Langone Medical Center at New York University. "Because it seems that loud music throws people off their game and renders them less in control of their capacity to moderate their drinking."

Galanter was not a part of the research team, which noted that prior explorations into the effect of music on drinking have already revealed that people spend more time in a bar that plays music than one that doesn't, and that fast music in particular seems to prompt fast drinking. The style of music played in a bar can also affect drinking behavior, although in varying ways, depending on the cultural setting.

I remember reading a study a few years ago which compared the amount of alcohol in bars playing different kinds of music such as rock and roll bars, country and western, jazz clubs, disco dance clubs, etc. By far the most alcohol was sold in country and western bars.