Drinking wine might boost your creativity
A small glass of wine or a pint of beer might help your creativity, as Austrian scientists have found in their study published in the journal Consciousness & Cognition.
“Alcohol is so linked with creativity,” lead author Dr Mathias Benedek said, according to the Independent. “Previous research has found almost half of the great writers had a history of drinking. We found that a small drink can indeed help with certain aspects of creativity.”
However, Benedek explained that moderate drinking could make focused work more difficult. “It might well work for someone who is sitting down to do creative writing or brainstorming ideas in a boardroom,” Benedek explained.
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For the study, some participants were given a bottle of normal beer, while others were given a non-alcoholic beer, which they couldn’t distinguish between. They were than given a series of word association tasks – for instance, they were asked to link the “swiss”, “blue” and “cake”. Those who drunk alcohol were more likely to guess that the linking word was “cheese”. Furthermore, they also exceeded in a creative thinking task, in which they had to suggest alternative uses for tyres, with “a swing” considered one of the most creative answers. However, the alcohol-drinkers had less focus and cognitive control – in other words, they were drunk.
“There are two theories for how this works,” Benedek said. “The first being that when you are really focusing on solving a problem, you can become fixated so that your mind gets stuck on one way of addressing it. Alcohol makes it more difficult to keep all the parameters of the task in mind, but that can also help you come at it from another direction. The second theory is that alcohol, which is distracting from the central task, allows you to tap into your unconscious mind and find alternative solutions.”
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