We learned this week from the Harvard Business Review of a study alleging that mild intoxication can enhance “creative thinking.” “You often hear of great writers, artists, and composers who claim that alcohol enhanced their creativity, or people who say their ideas are better after a few drinks,” the study’s author, Andrew Jarosz of Mississippi State University, tells the Review. “We wanted to see if we could find evidence to back that up, and though this was a small experiment, we did.”
Jarosz and his coauthors put a series of word-association questions to two groups of students—one tipsy, the other sober. For example: Which word relates to these three: “duck,” “dollar,” “fold”? The answer is “bill.” Or this one: “cry,” “front,” “ship.” The answer: “war” or “battle.” In general, the tipsy subjects answered slightly more accurately and quickly.
We have no trouble believing that a drink or two enhances creativity, even if it’s a rather useless form of creativity. And as Jarosz points out, you can easily overdo it. “If you get your blood alcohol level too much beyond .08,” he says, “you probably won’t be very useful. And you may have trouble screening out terrible ideas.”
Where would we be without academic studies to tell us these things?
As for those claims by great artists, writers, and composers that drugs or booze inspired them, we recall an essay by the great English critic John Sutherland published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1998, marvelously titled “Turns Unstoned.” Sutherland examined claims by Walter Scott, Samuel Coleridge, Wilkie Collins, and Jack Kerouac to have produced works of genius under the influence. The short answer: They stretched the truth or just lied.
One other note. Readers may wish to know that The Weekly Standard’s editor in chief has just sent The Scrapbook a memo: Drinks may not be expensed for reasons of creativity-enhancement.
