Do Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills?
The new research says that drinking alcohol may enhance a person’s problem solving skills. Scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers not only got more questions right, they also were quicker in delivering correct answers, compared to men who answered the questions sober.
The new research says that drinking alcohol may enhance a person’s problem solving skills. Scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers not only got more questions right, they also were quicker in delivering correct answers, compared to men who answered the questions sober.
Scientists
found that participants with a BAC of 0.07 or higher solved 40 percent more
problems than their sober counterparts and took 12 seconds to complete the
tasks compared to 15.5 seconds by teetotal participants.
While the latest findings go against the traditional beliefs that
alcohol impairs analytical thinking and rational thoughts,
lead author Professor Jennifer Wiley of the University of Illinois at Chicago
discovered that alcohol may enhance creativity problem solving by reducing the
mind’s working memory capacity, which is the ability to concentrate on
something in particular.
“Working memory capacity is considered the ability to control
one’s attention,” Wiley told the Federation of Associations in Behavioural and
Brain Sciences (FABBS). “It’s the ability to remember one thing while you’re
thinking about something else.”
While the latest study found that alcohol may enhance creative
problem solving, previous research found that increased working memory capacity
actually led to better analytical problem-solving performance.
Researcher from the current study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition also found that people who drank alcohol and had a blood alcohol
level of 0.07 or higher were worse at completing problems that required attentional
control but better at creative problem solving tests.
However, the surprising discovery was that participants with a BAC
of 0.07 or higher solved 40 percent more problems than their sober counterparts
and took 12 seconds to complete the tasks compared to 15.5 seconds by teetotal
participants.
Wiley said that the key finding was that being too focused can
blind a person to novel possibilities and a broader, more flexible state of
attention may be helpful for creative solutions to emerge.
“We have this assumption, that being able to focus on one part of a problem or having a
lot of expertise is better for problem solving,” Wiley said. “But that’s not
necessarily true. Innovation may happen when people are not so focused.
Sometimes it’s good to be distracted.”
Wiley noted that the findings only apply to people who had only a
few drinks and not when people drink to extremes.
“The bottom line is that we think being too focused can blind you
to novel possibilities, and a broader, more flexible state of attention is
needed for creative solutions to emerge,”
Other experts said while the findings were interesting and made
sense, they stressed that sleep is probably just as beneficial for enhancing
creativity. Past research showed that people who were allowed to sleep
after being given a problem were also more likely to come up with a creative
solution compared to those who stayed awake.
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+ comments + 2 comments
Aha i can drink more.....(kidding)
Cool! I appreciate that you guys keep on posting articles that will uplift alcohol's reputation. It's a good thing that you look at it's good side.
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