People Drink More if They Have More Friends Drinking With Them

The more friends a person is with when they are out drinking, the more they will drink themselves, a new study concludes.

The findings come from a study of almost 200 young adults in Switzerland, who participated in a survey on their smartphones. They were asked to check in hourly to report the number of drinks they had consumed, and the number of friends they were with. As the number of friends increased, so did the number of drinks a person consumed per hour, the study found. Men were more likely to drink more if they were in a bigger group, the researchers report in the journal Addiction.

The study is one of the first to collect real-time observational data on social drinking, instead of surveying people about past behavior, or recreating a bar scene in a lab setting, according to The Huffington Post.

“The arrival of more drinking buddies at the college bar on a Friday night may be cause for delight, but not necessarily a call for another round of drinks,” the researchers note in a news release.