People With Tattoos Tend To Drink More

Oh science, always telling us how to judge people. A new French study found that people with tattoos and/or piercings tend to drink more alcohol than their non-inked counterparts.

Researchers stood outside a bar, asking departing patrons to take breathalizer tests. Even though everyone was coming out of a drinking establishment, researchers found that out of almost 3,000 participants, tattooed and/or pierced men and women tended to have a higher blood alcohol content.

The study was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

So what does this mean? Pretty much nothing. Researchers warn against stereotyping inked folks as heavy drinkers, but apparently also suggest that parents and physicians take tattoos and piercings as potential "markers" of alcohol consumption.

So, while "a host of previous studies have routinely shown that individuals with body piercings or tattoos are more likely to engage in risky behavior than non-pierced or non tattooed people," study author Nicolas Guéguen said, other researchers suggest looking at age groups to decide if a certain tattooed person is at high risk.

Also, researcher Myrna Armstrong, who has studied correlations between tattoos and high-risk behavior, mentions that a person with one tattoo and a person with five to six tattoos should not be linked together. "In 2009, we conducted a study of those with one to two, three to four, and five or more tattoos," Armstrong said. "We found that those with only one tattoo were very similar to those without any tattoos in terms of high-risk behaviors, including alcohol."