Quickly read this subject line of an email I once received at work. What pops into your head?

“Weekly webinar this Tuesday”

Here’s what my brain interpreted: “Weekly winebar this Tuesday”

Winebar? Sounds good, right? I do like wine.

Now, this did occur during COVID times, when wine was on my mind, well, not infrequently. So, my mistake made me pause. Was my brain fine-tuned to notice all things related to alcohol? Was this primed state also affecting what I remembered?

I was reminded of this experience when I came across a study recently. The question researchers tackled was whether the mere sight of alcohol affects memory in heavier and lighter drinkers.

College students made up the sample, and they were sober during the experiment.

How was drinking level defined? The high drinkers averaged about two drinks per day. The low drinkers averaged less than two per month.

In the lab, participants saw a sequence of 15 object images—things like an umbrella and a football. However, halfway through the presentation, some people saw a picture of a whiskey bottle, and others saw a soda bottle.

Later, they tried to recall all the objects they had seen.

And here is where it got interesting.

For the heavier drinkers, a striking pattern emerged.

The lighter drinkers did not show either of these effects.

So, for high drinkers, just seeing alcohol had an effect: better memory for the booze, but amnesia for whatever came after it.

These findings are explained by a type of bias called attention narrowing. And it happens to all of us.

Basically, an emotional or important stimulus captures our attention,........

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