Having More Friends Means Drinking More Rounds

Newser|May 6, 2015 3:21 pm EST

Big group hitting the bars tonight? You're likely to guzzle more booze, especially if you're a man, a study published in Addiction finds. Swiss researchers had young adults complete surveys on their smartphones during "real-life" drinking situations, according to a news release at Eureka Alert—specifically, they participated every Thursday through Saturday night for five weekends. The subjects were asked five times throughout the night and once the next morning how much they'd drunk and how many friends were around. The average age of the 183 drinkers was 23, and they were divided about evenly by sex. The findings aren't hugely surprising: Having more friends around was linked to more drinks per hour, and the results were more pronounced among men. Drinks were also downed faster later in the night, Yahoo Health notes.

Similar research has been done before, but prior studies are often based on data collected after the night out. Information gathered after drinking sessions is often wrong, the news release says (for reasons we can't possibly fathom). One finding the researchers did dub "interesting": The impact group-size has didn't vary between Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. The researchers' takeaway: The findings could factor into warnings issued to young drinkers: As the release puts it, "the arrival of more drinking buddies at the college bar on a Friday night may be cause for delight, but not necessarily a call for another round." Speaking of young drinkers, another new study, this one out of the UK, finds men's booze consumption peaks at age 25. (It may also be a good idea to limit your boozing if you want to look hot, another study suggests.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Why Drinking in a Big Group Could Get You Drunker