Why do people behave immorally when drunk?

Abstract

Alcohol intoxication is a major source of antisocial behavior in our society, strongly implicated in various forms of interpersonal aggression. Yet, moral philosophers have paid surprisingly little attention to the literature on alcohol and its effects. In part, this is because philosophers who have adopted a more empirically informed approach to moral psychology have gravitated toward moral sentimentalism, while the literature on alcohol intoxication fits very poorly with the sentimentalist account. Most contemporary research on the psychological effects of alcohol is focused upon variants of the "disinhibition" theory, which suggests that alcohol does not provoke any specific affect, it merely weakens executive control. This research, we argue, lends support to a deontic moral psychology, which identifies our ability to suppress behavioral impulses as a central feature of moral agency.

The Drunk Utilitarian Revisited: Does Alcohol Really Increase Utilitarianism in Moral Judgment?

“….] like taking one’s foot off the brake” (Heath & Hardy-Vallée, 2015, p. 2), which is consistent with the greater willingness to cause pro-sacrificial harm in the “drunk utilitarian” phenomenon. However, counter to either of these ideas, we did not find any effects of alcohol on moral judgments.…”

Drinking alcohol appears to have no impact on self-perceptions of morality, aggressiveness, or intelligence.

“…From a psychological point of view, alcohol affects how people behave, feel, and think (Heath & Hardy-Vallée, 2015), and in our study, we expected that it could affect how people perceive their morality. Our analysis did not detect significant effects of the experimental manipulation on self-assessments of morality, measured both as a stable trait, that is, the MSC (Stake, 1994) and as the SIMI (Aquino & Reed, 2002).…”

“…Alcohol’s impact on behavior constitutes a third category of mechanisms that may influence self-assessment. Alcohol increases disinhibition (Bodnár et al, 2021), leading to impulsive, violent, or less sexually controlled behaviors (Exum, 2006; Greenfield, 1998; Heath & Hardy-Vallée, 2015; Pernanen, 1991; Roizen, 2002). When evaluating themselves, intoxicated people may draw on these negative behaviors, perceiving themselves as less moral.…”

“…When cognitive resources are diminished by alcohol intoxication, the resulting myopic perspective may be fixated on this sole, available self-view, leading to overly optimistic self-assessments. In addition, alcohol strongly reduces inhibition (Giancola et al, 2010), leading to a disregard of social norms and rules (Heath & Hardy-Vallée, 2015), the opening quote suggests. There is a widespread social norm that discourages people from bragging about themselves.…”

Regression I. Experimental approaches to regression

“…The influence of alcohol on a person’s social behaviour is understood ambiguously by researchers. On the one hand, alcoholic intoxication is associated with antisocial and aggressive behaviour, which is explained by the suppression of the ‘moral component’ of actions (Heath & Hardy‐Valle’е ); on the other hand, in certain situations, alcohol increases the individual’s desire to help others and is associated with manifestations of altruism (Steele et al ). Such conflicting manifestations of alcoholic intoxication are attributed by some authors to the phenomena of ‘alcoholic myopia,’ a primitivized, simplified perception that leads to different effects depending on the specific details of the situation and the social context (see the review by Steele & Josephs , as well as data on the dependence of alcohol effects on the social context by Peterson et al ).…”