You probably already knew that smiles are contagious. You probably already knew that boners were too. And you probably already knew that if you throw in a bit of booze the chances of that guy smiling at you resulting in the aforementioned boners are greatly increased. But thanks to a new study published in Clinical psychological Science, we now have scientific proof that grinning and getting an erection go hand in hand provided he’s been drinking like a fish. Well, not exactly ‘cuz when fish drink they don’t get as friendly as guys do. But I’d score that as a point for the homo team.

With far too much governmental grant funds on their hands, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh decided to delve deeper into a phenomenon known as emotional contagion, in which without realizing it, your emotional state is affected by the facial expressions and cues of the people you interact with. For example, if someone is smiling genuinely, you’re likely to “catch” that smile. But then there are smiles and then there are smiles. And grins produced by gin are a lot more fun to study. So the researchers split 720 healthy social drinkers into groups of three — with each one assigned either a vodka cocktail, a non-alcoholic drink, or a placebo drink (alcohol-free, but with vodka smeared inside the glass).

Each group was introduced and then served drinks at regular intervals to test how well strangers bonded socially. The scientists watched for genuine smiles, as opposed to the fake ones we all tend to flash in group settings (which were easy to weed out on camera). They also observed the groups to see how quickly those smiles jumped from one person to another. And the winners were those with wieners who’d had a drink or two.

It seems that quicker than crabs can spread from one person to another, when you get a group of men together and ply them with booze, they start smiling at each other like nuns eyeballing a cucumber. But only when only penis is in the room. When fish intrude those smiles disappear; mixed groups in the study did not trade smiles any more or less whether drunk or sober. ‘Cuz even when drunk there are somethings ya just don’t wanna get close to.

The researchers concluded that men have to raise their blood alcohol level to be social and friendly. And lead author of the study, PhD candidate Catharine Fairbairn, said that because men really do seem to enjoy social situations more as they consume more alcohol, these group settings might be where they develop their dangerous drinking habits. Methinks some angry fish was just pissed at how happy all those penis were without women around. And it’s not that men need to drink to be social and friendly with each other either, it’s just that after pounding a few back curious straight boys have that ‘Boy was I drunk last night!’ excuse to fall back on.

What the researchers missed was the fact that when the gods are smiling upon us and there are no fish in the room, guys are just as happy to be surrounded by nothing but dick and those smiles become highly contagious. As do their soon-to-follow erections. The University of Pittsburgh needs to do a follow up study where all participants are nude. ‘Cuz that room full of only men will set a new record for how quickly they all have a shit-eating grin on their faces. And that’s a study I’d be in favor of my tax money paying for.

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