American psychologists have found that a mild degree of intoxication helps to better solve creative problems.
Creative people use a variety of techniques to spark their imaginations. Thus, the heroes of The Twelve Chairs were sure that Leo Tolstoy wrote The Kreutzer Sonata under the influence of vegetarianism, and the monumental War and Peace was born thanks to the meaty period in the count's life. But more often writers use a different kind of "fuel". Remarque's “Arc de Triomphe” owes much to such an alcoholic drink as Calvados, which is apple vodka. And whiskey is rightfully considered to be the co-author of many of Hemingway's works. Anyway, until the writer switched to Cuban cocktails Mojito and Daiquiri.
But the ability of alcohol to stimulate the flight of thought was until recently considered scientifically unproven. And any attempts to imitate their great literary idols, as a rule, are met by the dearest half with offensive remarks like: "Well, that drunk, again in the garages had a drink with his drinking companions?" …
What effect does alcohol have on the nature of creativity? Does alcohol help to induce a surge of inspiration? These issues were addressed by a group of American psychologists led by Andrew Yarosh from the University of Mississippi. Their research has been published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.
They conducted a simple experiment for which they recruited 20 students over the age of 21. To begin with, the “guinea pigs” were poured three cocktails, it was a mixture of Smirnoff vodka and cranberry juice. And then 30 minutes later, when the alcohol concentration reached its maximum, the brave experimenters were asked to take a test to look for distant associations. What it is? They say three words to you and you need to come up with a fourth, which will be associated with each of them. For example, what associations do the words “fast”, “green”, “full” give you? The train option seems to be on the surface. But there were more difficult tasks. For example, "tears", "contractions", "cry" can be combined with the word "war", or can be explained by the birth of a child. A group of students had to answer several series of such questions and offer as many options as possible.
“It turned out that drunken participants in the experiment invariably solved 13-20 percent more puzzles in the same period of time than their sober comrades in the control group,” says lead author of the study, Professor Andrew Yarosh. - How can this be explained? After all, it is well known that alcohol inhibits the work of the intellect. In our opinion, when it comes to insights or unexpected ideas, the weakening of internal control has a positive effect. Alcohol allows the intellect to overcome the inertia of standard thinking, to attract more associations to solving the problem. Should you brainstorm in bars rather than boardrooms? Not sure if this is a good idea. A glass of martini can be useful for riding the Pegasus, but at a bar you are unlikely to settle for one serving. And when you lose controlthen there will be serious problems with weeding out crazy ideas and the efforts will no longer be effective. As Hemingway said, you need to write drunk and edit sober.
At the same time, scientists emphasize that in classes that require accurate calculation and attention - for example, when solving math problems or driving a car, alcohol is unacceptable.
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Since it was not a booze, but a rigorous scientific experiment, the dose of alcohol for each professor Yarosh and his colleagues calculated individually, based on the weight of the participant. The 80-kilogram guy had a total of about 70 grams of vodka. They were divided into three doses, which the participants "put on the collar" at intervals of 10 minutes. Scientists planned to reach the border when the brain is just beginning to take the first steps towards a state of altered thinking. Psychologists have determined this threshold for blood alcohol concentration at 0.75 ppm. In comparison, you can drive a car in the United States if your blood alcohol level is 0.8 ppm or less. We can say that 70 grams of vodka (or 200 grams of dry wine, or half a liter of beer) is the barrier behind which creative searches turn into a spiritless alcoholic sabbath.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV