Alcohol can help creativity

All those writers who gave the excuse that alcohol helps them to write better and gives their creativity that extra boost may not have been wrong after all. Researchers at the University of Graz claim to have now found proof that alcohol can indeed act as a solution for writer’s block.

Dr Mathias Benedek published a study in Consciousness & Cognition, where he spoke about the effects ‘mild alcohol intoxication’ has on a person’s cognitive capacity.  His study was performed on 89 participants who were asked to solve tasks, which are considered to be measures of creativity. Half of them were given beer with a mild alcohol content while the rest were given an alcolol-free variety. However, none of the participants were told which one they had consumed. In a journal article Dr Benedek wrote, “Alcohol may particularly play a role in mitigating fixation effects in creative problem solving, problems can often only be solved after a restructuring of the problem representation.”

However, the scientist also warned that the findings only worked accurately as long as the alcohol consumption is limited to a nominal limit.