Intoxicating creativity?

Can alcohol make you more creative? According to a recent study*, the answer is yes: being moderately drunk can help you reach the A-ha! moment more frequently and more quickly than when you are sober.

The researchers gave 20 men** vodka and cranberry juice until their blood alcohol count was 0.75 (just drunk enough to lose inhibitions and reasoning abilities, but not drunk enough to stagger around).

The moderately drunk men were quicker and faster at solving problems on the Remote Associates Test, where you get three words (such as sore, shoulder, and sweat), and have to find the word that links all three (in this case cold—cold sore, cold shoulder, and cold sweat).

Interestingly, the men also felt more creative, which might explain why so many creative people through the ages have used alcohol as creative stimulant. The researchers point to Beethoven, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Jackson Pollock, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Socrates. We can also add James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Eugene O’Neill, Jack Kerouac, and many others to this list.

Why does this work?

Unlike analytical thinking that requires a logical, step-by-step approach, creative thinking is associational—the mind leaps from one thought to another, or something in the environment (a conversation, an object, a smell) provokes memories or associations.

This study suggests that the drunk men abandoned logical thinking (or “unnecessarily complex strategies”) more quickly than the sober men, opening the mind to free-forming and associative thinking.

Previous studies have shown that drunk people lose focus and the ability to concentrate (we know this, don’t we?) which also encourages the mind to wander.

We also know that losing your inhibitions (a key sign that someone is more than tipsy) can make you more creative.

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* Jarosz, Andrew F., Colflesh, Gregory J.H., and Wiley, Jennifer (2012). Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving. Consciousness and Cognition 21(1), March 2012. 487-493.

** Why men? Researchers commonly use male participants when alcohol is involved, as female participants might be (unknowingly) pregnant.

Comments

[Steve]

Thanks for your interesting post.

Ernest Hemingway is often quoted as saying, "Write drunk, edit sober," and this is held up as some kind of great wisdom from the master himself. The problem is, nobody can ever cite a specific work of his on this. That's because he never said it. Also, that was not his practice. Papa would write in the morning and get drunk in the afternoon. He did not get drunk when he was writing. He did not use liquor as a "creative stimulant," but for other reasons. He was treated for depression and eventually took his own life. I haven't checked them out, but I imagine the other examples are equally bogus.

The Remote Associates Test is a lousy model of creativity. The sober group takes an average of 15.4 seconds to solve a puzzle, while the drunk group takes 11.5 seconds. Does that mean that the drunk group is more "creative" than the first? Hardly. Creativity combines many factors -- mastery of craft, good work habits, discipline, experimenting with different processes. I disagree with your characterization of creative thinking as associational -- the most creative thinking combines various cognitive modes, sometimes including analytical, step-by-step approaches.

There are writers who take a shot of booze to loosen up or to silence the inner critic before banging out a draft. This can help them get the draft out, but I believe there are better approaches that are not self-destructive.

[Martie Groenewald]

Alcohol is certainly not going to help you solve more interesting problems than the RAT ones. The RAT uses insight solutions (the "A-ha!" experience) to measure creativity, which is mostly irrelevant to either creative solutions to complex problems or creativity as in art.

I agree that creativity is more than associational. Creativity is both finding new ideas and solutions (which is often about associations, making new connections, seeing something in a new light), and doing something about those ideas, which calls for a different mindset than drunk and dreamy.