The recent assault in Colvale, where a group of four drunk youth on speeding bikes attacked an elderly man after he questioned their behaviour, is deeply unsettling. It is a reminder of how fragile self-control when mixed with alcohol and misplaced bravado can result in aggressive assault and even death.
Goa is associated with beauty, hospitality, tourism and leisure. It is also, quite openly, associated with free-flowing and affordable alcohol. Many people consume alcohol responsibly, socially and without harm. Yet for some people, alcohol loosens the brakes, lowers judgement and can turn irritation into aggression.
Alcohol does not create character; it reveals and intensifies it. Some individuals are naturally more impulsive than others. Some have low frustration tolerance. Others are highly sensitive to insult and prone to feeling disrespected even when no disrespect was intended.
There are also people who externalise blame easily, meaning they are quick to see others as the problem and slow to examine their own conduct. In such people, alcohol amplifies what is already there.
How do alcohol and aggression intersect? Theories of aggression indicate that alcohol can lower self-control, make people act the way they expect a drunk person to act, and make it harder to think clearly in tense situations.
One of the earliest and influential ideas is the frustration-aggression hypothesis, which suggests that aggression often follows blocked goals, humiliation, or perceived obstruction. A person who feels challenged, corrected, or denied something they want may experience anger. Alcohol makes this worse because it weakens the ability to pause and reinterpret the situation calmly.
Cognitive theories indicate that people who are prone to aggression often show hostile attribution bias. In simple language, they assume hostile intent quickly. A question from a stranger, a warning from a waiter or a request from an elderly resident may be interpreted as an insult. Once that interpretation takes hold, the emotional response escalates. The problem is not only the event itself but also the meaning assigned to it.
Reviews of experimental studies show that while alcohol does contribute to aggressive behaviour, it does not automatically make every person violent; rather, it makes provoked or already disinhibited people more likely to act aggressively. It weakens intellectual functioning, attention, and self-monitoring.
That means a person under the influence is less likely to think through consequences, less likely to recognise another person’s perspective and less likely to stop once anger starts rising. A small irritation can therefore become a public scene that can escalate into an assault.
This is why alcohol-related aggression is often visible on roads and in restaurants. Behind the wheel or on a bike, a drunk person may feel invincible, bold and untouchable. In restaurants, alcohol can turn ordinary correction into confrontation.
Staff who request basic decorum often become the target of anger. The elderly, who speak with a natural expectation of civility, may become targets because their very request is experienced as an interruption.
In some cases, repeated severe outbursts may point to a deeper condition such as intermittent explosive disorder, where aggression is sudden, impulsive and out of proportion to the situation.
But not every alcohol-fuelled assault is a psychiatric disorder. More often, it is a mix of personality traits, social learning, intoxication, peer encouragement and the false belief that one can behave badly without consequence.
Alcohol-related aggression can corrode a place like Goa that depends heavily on social ease, hospitality and public confidence. It is essential that all need to feel that public spaces are safe.
If people excuse aggression as just drunken behaviour, then self-control loses status, bravado gains value and behaviour gets repeated.
Such indirect social approval can quietly sustain harmful conduct. The deeper lesson is that no amount of alcohol and aggression should be allowed to erase humanity and life itself.
(The writer is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at St Xavier’s College, Mapusa)
