Can Bartenders Tell if You're Underage?Not if you're a girl.
Posted Tuesday, July 3, 2007, at 5:04 PM ET
As of July 1, all people who want to buy beer in Tennessee must present identification—even if they're clearly senior citizens. "It's the stupidest law I ever heard of. …You can see I'm over 21," one irritated beer drinker in his 60s said to the Associated Press. The new policy is supposed to take the guesswork out of the equation for clerks who aren't always sure if they need to request proof of age. But are we really that terrible at telling how old someone is?
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StumbleUponYes. Researchers have examined the topic of store clerk's accuracy in age estimation, mostly with regard to tobacco and alcohol sales. Clerks and bartenders tend to get more accurate as they spend more time on the job, but they're far from perfect. A 2001 study, for example, found that British bartenders might as well be picking at random when they try to distinguish between girls who are 16 and those who are above the drinking age of 18.
Some people are better than others at guessing ages. Practice helps, so experienced bartenders (and some carnies) tend to be quite adept. For new clerks or those who need some boning up, training—for instance, by displaying pictures of people, asking neophytes to guess the person's age, and then providing feedback on whether they were right or wrong—can help increase a checkout boy's ability to tell a 25-year-old from an 18-year-old. (The Tennessee law encourages stores to train their clerks in "methods of recognizing and dealing with underage customers.")
Our accuracy at guessing someone's age depends on other factors, too. Some research suggests that clerks tend to underestimate the ages of people under 21 and overestimate for people older, while other studies find the opposite. We do best when we're attempting to peg the age of someone who is close to us in age and comes from the same racial background. And we're especially prone to overestimating the ages of teenage girls. In the British study, bartenders were shown pictures of people aged 13 through 22 and asked to guess their ages. They judged about one of every five 13-year-old girls to be over 18, while they correctly identified the 13-year-old boys 97 percent of the time.
The new law might be helpful for any Tennessean store clerks suffering from a disorder called prosopagnosia, or "face blindness." Prosopagnosia, which is sometimes associated with a stroke, autism, brain damage, or other neurological disorder, can limit an individual's ability to estimate age at all.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Matthew Rhodes of Colorado State University.
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Remarks from the Fray:
I've been a bartender, and I was busted for selling alcohol to someone I thought was around 25. He was 6 feet, at least, had facial hair, glasses, business jacket. He was 17.
The problem with any test, is that there is nothing, not gray hair nor baldness, that is a clear definer of someone's age. Which really proves that everyone should present their ID before buying alcohol. I applaud Tennessee for this new rule. It is time to stop punishing people for not knowing how old someone is by their looks, when their is NO valid universal qualifier. Its like busting people for speed limit infractions, without having speedometers, speed limit signs, or the math to calculate speed. It really is unfair.
--tvindett
(To reply, click here.)
I wonder why they are so inaccurate estimating underage girls.
It seems possible that taboos play a role in this. Some underage girls are really quite lovely and although there's really nothing deviant in noting a young girl's attractiveness, it still may feel like pedophilia.
It seems likely that if there's any conscious or unconscious flash of "what a pretty girl," respondents will think they are older to square their thoughts with their moral standards.
I'm not saying there's anything perverse in this. There's a mile of moral distance between thought and action and ten miles between "what a pretty girl" and "I'd like to..." But our taboos against pedophilia are strong enough that even innocent thoughts may lead to protective wrong estimates.
--Kija
(To reply, click here.)
Surveys are in every magazine and newspaper around the globe. Some are researched properly, but most are misleading and poorly studied. Surveys, the end all statistical evidence to a debate, tend to ask the wrong questions and leave out the most important ones.
A study was done on whether bartenders are better at guessing an individual's age than most people. These surveys, all funded with taxpayers money, don't ask the right questions and then publish incorrect figures. Bartenders were given pictures w/ under and over age women/men. They were 80% correct guessing legal drinking women and 97% correct with men.
This information is very misleading b/c it was not correctly gathered. Body language is the tell in every aspect of sales, but it was left out. A picture can not show a true demeanor or attitude. Before you use a survey as very close fact, see how they were conducted and tested.
--spaquay
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Yet another glowing example of our 'nanny' government at work. Not only is this 'law' stupid, it wont work. Why? Because to verify an ID you have perform basic math which is beyond the skill set of most cashiers working today. That's why we have pictures of hamburgers on registers and scanners.
Want proof? I own a liquor license so I pay attention to these things. In a local sting operation out here in New Hampshire (where liquor is sold only through State owned stores) a clerk at a State store sold liquor to a minor even though the person clearly looked like a minor, and presented an ID with a birth date that indicated she was under 21. The clerk didn't even need to do the math, since they had one of those glaring red posters with the date you had to be born by!
If the guv'ment thinks this law will keep liquor out of the hands of minors they obviously know nothing about how kids get liquor. A minor doesn't walk into a liquor store and TRY to buy liquor. They walk into a store where they KNOW they can buy liquor. I saw this happen a month ago where a line of obviously under-aged teenagers were standing in a checkout line of a local gas station each carrying a case of beer. In front was as cashier/manager probably 19 or 20 himself who was checking out these kids as fast as they could walk up.
Underage drinkers aren't stupid, and even if they are, they are still smarter than these legislators.
--theaterowner
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(7/5)