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SURVEYS & POLLS
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (CAP) - The scenes from the past couple of weeks are familiar.
A president inviting two men to the White House for a beer to diffuse racial tensions. A Toledo mayoral candidate and his heckler sitting down over a brew to air out their differences. In both cases, the libation at hand was a classic guys hanging with guys one, the go-to drink over which to get together and hash things out: perfectly natural.
Also perfectly therapeutic, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Microbrewology and conducted at the University of Santa Barbara.
In the study, 64 college undergraduates were given various amounts of beer over the course of three days, during which they underwent a series of exercises designed to test their abilities to foster relationships, mend grievances, work together as a unit - essentially get along.
The study's authors found that at moderate levels, a subject's ability to thrive and function within a group (as measured by their Kinetic Elemental Working Level, or KEWL) was elevated.
"It varied by subject, but generally two to three beers and most subjects were able to do quite well with the group-structured tasks we gave them, and maintain their KEWL," said Dr. Jonathan Steele, lead researcher for the study. "Higher than that, particularly as you approach and surpass what we call the I love you man stage, and a subject's Kinetic Elemental Working Level will start to drop quickly.
"By the time they are pissing on their shoes and puking in the female test subjects' hair, we could detect no KEWL at all," Steele noted.
While the study concentrated on a single category of beer (the popular "blonde" lager-types that make up most of the consumption in the United States), researchers found that even within this category there was a degree of variation.
"Most beers were about the same, but some like Milwaukee's Best and Pabst Blue Ribbon were sort of in a category by themselves," Steele said. "The subjects on those brands just got pissed and irritable drinking it and refused to participate in any of the exercises."
Ultimately, Dr. Steele believes that beer might one day be welcomed at most bargaining and negotiating tables.
"A keg in the U.N. or Heineken on tap in the Senate? Absolutely," Steele said. "At the very least the occasional pee breaks will help to structure meetings and hearings and foster a certain bathroom camaraderie that can only further the efforts towards world peace and global prosperity."
While the White House has been officially silent on the subject, Vice President Joe Biden was overwhelmingly supportive of the idea when recently asked about it.
"Hey, if they'd been serving brew-haha's at the VP debate, Big Joe so would have dinked that moronic bitch after it, you know what I mean?" Biden told reporters aboard an Amtrak train he was aimlessly riding up and down the eastern seaboard Sunday. "Beer goggles, baby, beer goggles. That's far-out man, you know what I mean?"
Contributing Writer
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