London: Do you know which type of drunk you are – a menacing Mr Hyde or a friendly Mary Poppins? Psychologists have found that people turn into one of four character types when drunk. These include the Ernest Hemingway who is barely affected by excessive alcohol; the Mary Poppins who is friendly and compassionate and the Nutty Professor who is transformed from a quiet type to a confident extrovert.
Worst of all is the menacing and hostile Mr Hyde, researchers said, adding that most people who fall into the last category were women. Psychologists at the University of Missouri-Columbia asked more than 360 men and women to complete a personality test: once when they were sober and once when they were under the influence of alcohol. The results showed that the largest group of drunks were the Hemingways, who changed very little. Hemingways were almost exactly as reliable, organised and prompt intoxicated as when they were sober, and they had very little trouble with their intellects, imaginations and abstract ideas.
“Two previous studies have found that, on average, [intellect and conscientiousness] reportedly decrease the most with intoxication, so the moderate decreases demonstrated by this group make its members stand out as being ‘less affected’ than drinkers in some of the other groups – much like the author Ernest Hemingway, who claimed that he could ‘drink hells any amount of whiskey without getting drunk’,” researchers said. Named after the main character of two Disney films who is chemically transformed into a more outgoing character, the Nutty Professors were transformed from quiet, introverted people to loud, brash drunks after a few drinks.
The group includes far more men than women, ‘The Times’ reported.The Mary Poppins drunk could be guaranteed not to start a drunken argument or fall over in a bar and instead was a friendly, compassionate drinker. “They decrease less than average in conscientiousness, intellect and agreeableness when intoxicated,” the researchers said. The umbrella-twirling nanny Mary Poppins is the lead character in a series of children’s books written by P L Travers. The menacing Mr Hyde drunks, named after the sinister alter-ego of Dr Jekyll in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, should be avoided at all costs. These are the hostile types who become more disagreeable with every drink and are most likely to experience blackouts or be arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour. Psychologists found that two thirds of the people in this category were women. The study was published in the Addiction Research and Theory journal.
