Higher decibels lead to greater arousal

What’s the loudness of music got to do with drinking? Lots, it seems.

A new French study reveals that when the volume of background music in pubs and bars is turned up, customers tend to consume more drinks.

“The presence versus absence of music, high versus slow tempo and the different styles of environmental music are associated with different levels of alcohol consumption,” say Nicholas Guéguen and his colleagues at the Université de Bretagne Sud and the Université de Rennes, France. They wanted to find out how the level of music may influence drinking behaviour. The findings appear in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Restaurant owners have long known the effect music can have on customers’ appetites. Foodies tend to eat more when the environmental music has a slower tempo. Studies have also shown that “drinking songs” increased the length of time customers stayed in a bar and the average amount spent.

Guéguen and his associates discreetly visited two bars in a medium-size city for three Saturday evenings. The subjects were 40 males between 18 and 25 years of age. The background music was the Top 40 collection typically played in pubs. The sound level in the control condition was the same as that played normally — 72 decibels (which is like listening to a radio station at pretty normal volume). In the high level condition, the music was played at 88dB (noise equivalent to that let out by an operating lawnmower). Only patrons who had ordered a glass of draft beer were selected. That way it was possible to evaluate the consumption behaviour with the same category and amount of product.

The results showed that high sound levels led to increased rates of drinking, reducing the average time spent by the subjects to drink their beer.

There are two reasons for this, the researchers hypothesise. “One, in agreement with previous research on music, food and drink, high sound levels may have caused higher arousal, which led the subjects to drink faster and to order more drinks,” says Guéguen. “Two, loud music may have had a negative effect on social interaction in the bar, so that patrons drank more because they talked less.”

So the next time you enter a pub, make sure the music doesn’t get the better of you.