Half Full or Empty: Cues That Lead Wine Drinkers to Unintentionally Overpour

Abstract

What might unknowingly bias the amount of wine a person serves themselves? Wine is often self-poured in various settings (e.g., at home, restaurants, receptions, parties). Building on research involving visual illusions and haptic cues, an exploratory field study finds that environmental factors (e.g., glass shape, pouring position, wine color) affect how much wine is poured in different scenarios. When individuals overpoured, they were generally accurate in post hoc perceptions of the relative extent to which the environmental cues affected their pouring. Increasing awareness of pouring biases is a step toward limiting alcohol intake for improved health outcomes and preventing alcohol-related problems.

Keywords :

• overpouring
• overconsuming
• environmental cues
• wine

Notes

1 Although the effects of the individual differences are not the focus of this study, controlling for them as done with the fixed effects model is crucial. For example, a random effects model where the mean effects are allowed to be a function of biological sex reveals that on average, females pour just over 16 grams less than do males.

2 Both a second and a third order model were tested and rejected.