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Depends on the group. Also it doesn't have to be a group activity - two or three people can meet at a group and agree to go get a drink after. That's typically how it happens, and how you form stronger bonds. You break out from a larger group into a smaller subset.
Also, do you really think frats and gangs are the only groups that drink together? I fear you might have a bias against alcohol. Off the top of my head - theater goers, dancers, people who play pool, many people who go to sports game, etc get drunk enough to become more honest than most.
Only ones to drink together? Of course not. Only ones to drink together enough to get drunk, often enough for it to be a significant contributor to trust? Could be. I've been in a lot of contexts where people get drunk (including sports and theater) and can't say trust ever seemed to come from drinking. It came from working together. If anything, excessive drunkenness was associated with less trust ("do they have enough self-control to help the group succeed?", "they did something inappropriate while drunk").
I'm not biased against alcohol. I drink and have gotten drunk. Making such an accusation is a waste of space, and I may as well just accuse you of being biased towards alcohol. Does doing so further the discussion in any way?
I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding - I see 3-4 drinks to be enough for most people to be more trustworthy. You don't need to get sloshed in order to be more open to telling the truth, in fact if someone is wasted they're probably going to be speaking nonsense. I called you out being biased because I thought you meant nobody besides frats, gangs etc had more than a couple drinks which I saw as blatantly false.
I am still curious as to your thought about sober people being more honest than someone 3-4 drinks in. I hope I've clarified well enough.
Yes, I assumed more than 3-4. That isn't a lot for people who consistently have several drinks at once.
Personally, at 3-4 drinks I certainly will say things I wouldn't be willing to say when sober. Does this reflect increased honesty? Is inhibition due to consideration of social rules dishonest? This seems like a philosophical question; I like to think that who I am sober, including the System 2 considerations, is a more useful picture of "who I am" than drunk-me saying the first thing that comes to mind, like how my choice of hobbies is more reflective of who I am than my reaction to jump scares.
If specifically you mean "are people more willing to say thing they think are true but unpopular" that might be true at 3-4 drinks, but I've been in a lot of situations where people drink that much and it doesn't seem like they say things they wouldn't say normally. Like, I'm more likely to ask someone out, maybe do Karaoke. In my experience I'm not any more likely to say controversial things. It might theoretically have this effect, but as I've said all of the groups I've been in seemed to build trust primarily in other ways.
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