Study Suggests Drunk Witnesses Are Less Likely to Remember a Suspect’s Face

The University of Portsmouth, England, has this press release announcing this unsurprising result. “New research has revealed that alcohol can impair the ability of eyewitnesses to accurately recall a suspect’s facial features, particularly key details such as the eyes, nose, and mouth.”

It’s easy to laugh and say “of course” (and I did), but there is some value in research that confirms the obvious. Every once in a while such efforts actually contradict the obvious, and those incidents are important in the progress of science. The research also fills in some details that are not quite so obvious.

Thirty-eight participants, all of whom had normal or corrected to normal vision, consumed either alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks before viewing videos of unfamiliar female faces. The following day, they were asked to describe these faces.

Those who drank alcohol had more difficulty accurately recalling internal facial features compared to the sober participants, but they could still remember external features like hairstyles. Interestingly, whether or not the models’ hair was tied back or worn loose did not influence recall accuracy.

The paper, published in the journal Memory, says this suggests that alcohol narrows attention to more noticeable external features, while impairing memory for the defining internal facial features that are crucial for suspect identification.