Longer title: A Broader, More Flexible State of Attention
Shorter title: Kinsey IV
Shortest title: 🙄
Original title: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance 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.
While the latest findings go against the traditional beliefs that alcohol impairs analytical thinking and rational thoughts . . .
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.
[…]
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.
Source: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills
Maybe so.
I confess, though, that as I scanned over the above article, I wondered if this might end up being in the same general category as the infamous Kinsey Fabrications Reports. 🙂
Well, what the Bible says in Proverbs 23:29-32 ain’t complicated:
Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?
They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.
No. Thanks.
Then there’s this: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1).
Interesting study. I have had the misfortune of spending time with people who have had a few, and I can say that they think of themselves as very clever, capable, and funny. Any sober bystander would see them as pathetic, stupid and obnoxious. (and dangerous to themselves and others.)
That indeed is a misfortune. I don’t know that I have ever experienced it in the States, but I certainly did in Mexico. (That’s not to suggest that Mexico is more of a “drinking” nation than the US.) Thanks for commenting, Rebecca.