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Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption

Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. Despite considerable research on the misuse of alcohol, no one has ever asked why it might have become universally adopted, although the conventional view assumes that its only benefit is hedonic. In contrast, we suggest that alcohol consumption was ado...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dunbar, R. I. M., Launay, Jacques, Wlodarski, Rafael, Robertson, Cole, Pearce, Eiluned, Carney, James, MacCarron, Pádraig
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7010365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32104646
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40750-016-0058-4
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author Dunbar, R. I. M.
Launay, Jacques
Wlodarski, Rafael
Robertson, Cole
Pearce, Eiluned
Carney, James
MacCarron, Pádraig
author_facet Dunbar, R. I. M.
Launay, Jacques
Wlodarski, Rafael
Robertson, Cole
Pearce, Eiluned
Carney, James
MacCarron, Pádraig
author_sort Dunbar, R. I. M.
collection PubMed
description Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. Despite considerable research on the misuse of alcohol, no one has ever asked why it might have become universally adopted, although the conventional view assumes that its only benefit is hedonic. In contrast, we suggest that alcohol consumption was adopted because it has social benefits that relate both to health and social bonding. We combine data from a national survey with data from more detailed behavioural and observational studies to show that social drinkers have more friends on whom they can depend for emotional and other support, and feel more engaged with, and trusting of, their local community. Alcohol is known to trigger the endorphin system, and the social consumption of alcohol may thus have the same effect as the many other social activities such as laughter, singing and dancing that we use as a means of servicing and reinforcing social bonds.
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spelling pubmed-70103652020-02-24 Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption Dunbar, R. I. M. Launay, Jacques Wlodarski, Rafael Robertson, Cole Pearce, Eiluned Carney, James MacCarron, Pádraig Adapt Human Behav Physiol Original Article Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. Despite considerable research on the misuse of alcohol, no one has ever asked why it might have become universally adopted, although the conventional view assumes that its only benefit is hedonic. In contrast, we suggest that alcohol consumption was adopted because it has social benefits that relate both to health and social bonding. We combine data from a national survey with data from more detailed behavioural and observational studies to show that social drinkers have more friends on whom they can depend for emotional and other support, and feel more engaged with, and trusting of, their local community. Alcohol is known to trigger the endorphin system, and the social consumption of alcohol may thus have the same effect as the many other social activities such as laughter, singing and dancing that we use as a means of servicing and reinforcing social bonds. Springer International Publishing 2016-12-28 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC7010365/ /pubmed/32104646 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40750-016-0058-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Article
Dunbar, R. I. M.
Launay, Jacques
Wlodarski, Rafael
Robertson, Cole
Pearce, Eiluned
Carney, James
MacCarron, Pádraig
Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption
title Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption
title_full Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption
title_fullStr Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption
title_full_unstemmed Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption
title_short Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption
title_sort functional benefits of (modest) alcohol consumption
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7010365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32104646
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40750-016-0058-4
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