NCBI ROFL: The "Fan Can": innocent football fan fun, or menace to sober society?

Discover how ingroup associated colors influence the safety of alcohol perceptions and impact beer consumption risks on campuses.

Written byncbi rofl
| 1 min read
Google NewsGoogle News Preferred Source

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news

Sign Up

It’s booze week on NCBI ROFL! All this week we’ll be featuring articles about ethanol, ethyl alcohol, and even CH3CH2OH.Enjoy!

The Color of Safety: Ingroup Associated Colors make Beer Safer.

“Individuals display high levels of trust and express feelings of safety when interacting with social ingroup members. Here, we investigated whether cues related to ingroup membership would change perceptions of the safety of alcohol. Participants were exposed to images of beer in either a standard can or a can featuring the colors of their university (i.e., ‘fan cans’).We hypothesized that exposure to fan cans would change perceptions of the risks of beer drinking. Results showed that participants exposed to fan cans rated beer consumption as less dangerous (Experiment 1), were more likely to automatically activate safety-related mental content after unconscious perception of beer cues (Experiment 2), and viewed their ingroup’s party practices as less dangerous (Experiment 3). These results provide evidence that ingroup-associated colors can serve as a safety cue for alcohol, which may in theory perpetuate alcohol-related risk-taking, already a cause for concern on college and university campuses.”

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

Meet the Author

Stay Curious

JoinOur List

Sign up for our weekly science updates

View our Privacy Policy

SubscribeTo The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Subscribe