Not Quite Sure What They're Going for Here

This Ad Age article talks about a study on the effects of alcohol advertising that will appear in the January issue of Psychology Science. The study purportedly connects the viewing of images related to alcohol (such as beer bottles) with an enhanced feeling of aggression.

Now, I'm not a psychologist, and I can't claim to have a really strong understanding of how psychologists conduct research. But I am a research analyst and based on that, I think I'm qualified to say that the people doing this study haven't completely thought through their findings.

The study included a couple of different methods and the overall finding was that people connect images of alcohol to aggressive behavior. What the study does not find, however, is that alcohol-related images encourage aggressive behavior. In fact, what it actually finds is that people who already think that alcohol is connected to aggressive behavior are more likely to identify certain behaviors as aggressive after they've looked at pictures of beer bottles.

Ad Age reports on this, and rightly so, because it could, down the road, have an effect on beer and liquor advertising. The researchers say they didn't set out with that intention...but they wouldn't have. Watchdog groups, though, will probably latch onto these findings, though they don't actually deal with alcohol advertising at all.

Lies, damn lies and statistics is right. Research can be a scary, loose thing when it's being used against you.