Alcohol Can Turn You Into MacGyver
Usually the news about alcohol is about whether or not it can help or cause heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or other maladies, but today’s headline is different. Medical Daily reports “Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills.” That drinking a few beers can make you better at logic puzzles.
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….
Researchers 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.
No word on whether booze helps you out on trivia night at the bar. But I like to think a bit o’ whiskey will help you turn a typewriter into a nuclear bomb. Or…
