If you’ve always wanted to become a regular at the bar, chatting away with the proprietor and raising glasses with your buddies, here’s some incentive to make it happen. A recent study found that consistent visits to a nearby cozy pub are beneficial to peoples’ social lives and overall health.

This research was funded by the Campaign for Real Ale, so let's take it with a grain of salt, but its author has legitimate credentials: Professor Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist at Oxford. (You may have heard of his theory that humans can maintain only 150 stable relationships.) Dunbar writes that people who frequent a local bar on a regular basis have more close friends than people who don’t—especially if the bar is small and intimate. You can’t just go and drink alone, though. For a bar to qualify as your “local pub,” Dunbar says you need to know a few other customers and the landlord (or owner or bartender) personally.