Ohhh, never thought of this hypothesis: that the act of getting
drunk together might be a social technology that helps us verify
the trustworthiness of others by inhibiting their higher cognitive
functions and thus making it harder to consciously fake things.
That would make sense.
> To enhance our natural thin-slicing abilities, humans have
therefore also developed various cultural practices that make these
instant assessments more reliable. These techniques take advantage
of the fact that deception is fundamentally a cold-cognition act
and relies on cognitive control centers. This means that if we can
impair the cognitive control abilities of people we’re trying to
judge, we’ll do a better job of sussing them out: they will
be less able to confuse our cheater-detection systems.
> In one study that has proven enormously useful to law
enforcement agencies, researchers found that police officers could
significantly improve their ability to detect false statements if
suspects were asked to give their alibis in reverse order, starting
with the most recent event and working their way back. This is not
the way we normally tell stories, so being forced to do it
increases cognitive load. Dishonest suspects, it turns out, are
less effective liars if you handicap their conscious minds in this
way.
> This reverse-order alibi technique is a great tool for law
enforcement but not terribly practical when evaluating a potential
business partner or deciding if the people you’re about to
make a peace treaty with are being sincere. There are other ways to
achieve the same effect, though. The police study aimed to reduce
subjects’ cognitive control ability by increasing the
load-adding more weight, as it were. Alternately, you can keep the
load constant but decrease cognitive control ability-weaken the
mental muscles-by suppressing cognitive control centers. One way to
do this is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which involves
applying a powerful magnetic force to the appropriate region of the
skull. TMS, however, is a very recent technology and not exactly
widely available. Also, in most cultures it’s considered bad
form to shock the heads of new acquaintances with huge magnets.
> A much more low-tech and socially acceptable way to produce
the same effect is to get someone completely wasted. As we
discussed in chapter 6, one of the primary effects of alcohol and
other intoxicants is to “downregulate,” or temporarily paralyze,
areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with cognitive control. A
couple shots of tequila is the liquid equivalent of a nice jolt of
TMS. It’s therefore no accident that intoxicants of various
sorts are frequently employed by human beings as social lubricants.
Alcohol, kava, cannabis, magic mushrooms, you name it: any
intoxicant that people can get their hands on quickly comes to play
a central role in social occasions, both formal and informal. In
ancient China, no major treaty was signed without first bringing
everyone together in an extended, alcohol-soaked banquet. In fact,
this is one feature of Chinese culture that has not changed a bit
in over four thousand years. Any modern businessperson hoping to
ink a deal with Chinese partners had better get his or her liver in
shape first.
> On a less formal level, this is no doubt why intoxicants
are a universal feature of all sorts of human social gatherings,
from casual cocktail parties to fraternity mixers. Not only is
getting drunk pleasant, it also typically causes people to get
along more freely and easily (at least to a certain point, after
which the drunken fights break out). Intoxication enhances
cooperation in at least two ways. First of all, it reduces social
faking by inhibiting cognitive control centers. Second, if we all
get drunk together, we create a situation of mutual vulnerability
that makes trust easier to establish. Getting drunk is essentially
an act of mental disarmament. In the same way that shaking right
hands with someone assures them that you’re not holding a
weapon, downing a few tequila shots is like checking your
prefrontal cortex at the door. See? No cognitive control. You can
trust me.
Excerpt From: Slingerland, Edward. “Trying Not to Try.” Crown
