Could it be… Drinking vodka makes you talk more better? According to a recent study, drinking Russia’s favorite beverage may actually improve word association and verbal creativity.
The research carried out at the University of Illinois at Chicago and appearing in Consciousness and Cognition, shows that sober individuals take a more deliberative approach to word association, which slows them down.
In the study, 20 social drinkers watched an animated movie while eating a snack. Volunteers then drank enough of a vodka cranberry drink to reach an average peak blood alcohol level of 0.075 percent, just below the current 0.08 percent cutoff for legal intoxication in the United States. Another 20 social drinkers watched the same movie without eating or drinking.
Men in both groups then completed a creative problem-solving task. For each of 15 items, volunteers saw three words — say, peach, arm and tar — and had to think of a fourth word that forms a phrase with each of them, such as pit.
On average, participants at peak intoxication solved about nine problems correctly, versus approximately six winners for the sober crowd. It took an average of 11.5 seconds for intoxicated men to generate a correct solution, compared with 15.2 seconds for sober men.
So yes, that age old assumption that alcohol provides a benefit to creative processes is true…drinking truly is the key to success.
I am on my way to the liquor store now.
[Cheers gizmodo]
