The Drinking Man

In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,

Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;

Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,

There is no living with thee, or without thee.

Addison's Spectator.

Joseph Addison was not talking about the drinking man, but he might as well have been. The character of drinkers has had some rare laboratory study recently by Professor Theodore F. Lentz, of St. Louis' Washington University. At the University's Character Research Institute, Psychologist Lentz and his associates made some thoroughgoing inquiries into the views on life and morals of several hundred drinkers and teetotalers. They were all young (17 to 30), fairly well educated (at least high school), and included no chronic drunks. Among this relatively homogeneous group of men & women, Lentz found some very wide personality differences between drinkers and nondrinkers. His not entirely surprising conclusions, reported in the psychological journal, Character and Personality, include the following:

>Drinkers are more moody, cynical, argumentative, stubborn, pessimistic and restless than teetotalers. Drinkers feel more misunderstood.

> Drinkers are more gregarious, show more interest in exciting pastimes (like poker or attending murder trials) and in the opposite sex.

> Drinkers tend to be a good deal more materialistic and selfish, less loyal to friends, fonder of money (they generally have less).

> Drinkers are much more tolerant toward unconventional behavior, consider themselves more generous and affectionate, seem to have a keener sense of humor. They are more liberal politically and more international-minded. But they have more race prejudice, and more often hold that woman's place is in the home.

> Married people tend to drink more than bachelors, Catholics than Protestants, Democrats than Republicans.

> Contrary to "a quite prevalent notion that college life fosters elbow-bending," college men & women drink less than others.

> In school, teetotalers are more apt to walk off with academic honors, but after graduation drinkers are more apt to get skilled jobs, are less apt to be unemployed.

> Teetotalers are much more interested than drinkers in church, foreign missions, music, observatories, wild-flower picking. Their attitude toward drinkers is not devoid of envy: 59% of those examined wished that scientists would develop a beverage "retaining all the good features of alcohol but lacking all its harmful features."

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