If you think you’ve drunk alcohol, you may just as well have drunk alcohol. Your behaviour is affected anyway. It seems that an alcohol placebo can likewise influence the memory.

Previous research has suggested that people become more aggressive, more sexually aroused if they think that they have been drinking alcohol, regardless of whether their glass contained any alcohol at all.

Researchers from New Zealand divided 148 students into two groups. The first half were told that they were drinking vodka and tonic. The second were given to understand that they were drinking straight tonic. Then everyone was given just tonic. The illusion of the vodka was intensified by pouring the tonic out of vodka bottles and wetting the edges of the glass with vodka to give the smell of alcohol. The test subjects were shown pictures of a shop-lifter. A few minutes later, these same participants read texts containing false information about four stolen objects and other texts containing correct information about four other stolen objects. Three minutes later a test was run on the participants in which they were questioned about such details of the theft as they could remember.

The alcohol placebo seems not to have any significant effect on the memory per se. It does, however, appear to affect the ease with which incorrect information is accepted. Those who believed that they had been drinking vodka were more easily duped than the other test subjects as regards incorrect information about the shop-lifter.

These results demonstrate that an alcohol placebo affects not only the way in which our memories call up, but also our reliance in the correctness of our memories.

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