Can Alcohol Enhance Our Creativity?
Alcohol and creativity have gone hand-in-hand throughout history. We’ve seen artists and writers hold up quite a reputation for drinking to feed their creativity.
Maybe you’ve found ideas flow that bit better after a glass of wine too. But what does the evidence say? Does alcohol really enhance our creativity?
There is surprisingly little research in this field. Lots of evidence suggests that alcohol enhances creativity. However, these are largely anecdotal reports with little empirical basis.
A recent study concluded that creative problem solving improves when intoxicated. They gave participants either an alcoholic or non-alcoholic beer and made them do some tasks.
But how was creative problem solving measured? Through something called a Remote Associates Test. You give someone a series of word triads and they have to come up with a fourth word, linking the words together. For example — blue, cake, cottage — the answer is cheese. Whether this actually measures creativity is certainly up for debate. Although a validated measure, I’m not sure my creativity would shine through here!
You’re probably wondering, what is it about alcohol that potentially makes us more creative?
We are well aware that alcohol is detrimental to our cognitive functioning. One of the main ways is by reducing our working memory capacity. This reduces our attention span, concentration, memory and many other functions — sound familiar, huh?
Interestingly though, this may benefit getting those creative juices flowing. Reduced attentional control and concentration might actually improve our creativity.
A defining characteristic of creativity is divergent thinking — free flowing spontaneous ideas, exploring a multitude of solutions and disinhibited thoughts.
Innovative thought may happen when we aren’t focused at all! Perhaps being distracted is necessary to spark creativity, making alcohol rather…useful?
Less attentional control may improve performance on creativity tasks. Alcohol enhances that ability to mind-wander, which is so connected to creativity. Being less able to control attention means we might be better at processing our surrounding environment.
Although this research is compelling and you’re all wanting to get the wine out, let’s take a step back and remain critical.
Creativity is an immensely complicated construct. It is already difficult enough to define, which makes it even more challenging to measure. Does the study mentioned really measure creativity or just a form of intelligence?
Objectively measuring creativity in a lab is pretty hard. Using the Remote Associates Test runs the risk of simplifying creativity to a single measure, dumbing it down too much and not sufficiently capturing the concept. Equally so though, it is easy to be overwhelmed with the complexity of creativity.
We’ll never truly be able to measure creativity, as it is involved in everything that we do. You don’t have to be a brilliant writer or painter to be creative, it’s simply about having a slightly different and refined way of looking at, or studying something.
Our expectations are extremely powerful things, determining the way we think, feel and behave. Is it possible our expectation to be intoxicated plays a role in enhancing our creativity? This was controlled for in the study by giving half the participants a non-alcoholic beer. However, researchers have yet to investigate whether our belief of intoxication influences how creative we think we are. If you have those glasses of wine to help with writer’s block you might think you’re being extremely innovative — when you read those ideas sober, maybe, uh…not so much.
Another interesting idea is that our trait levels of creativity (how creative you are as an individual) may contribute to how alcohol influences us. It seems that alcohol may impair creativity in those who are naturally pretty creative — but those who lack creativity may benefit from the enhancing effects of alcohol.
It’s not entirely clear how dose-dependent creative abilities are from alcohol. It’s pretty obvious that if you’re unable to walk in a straight line, your creativity won’t be enhanced. But we don’t know how much alcohol is the ideal amount to enhance those creative thoughts. It is important to examine these dose-dependent factors more closely to determine when that creative potential from alcohol expires like with all other functioning.
I am not suggesting we all have a causal drink when we want to feel extra creative. However, I think as important it is to investigate the harms of the drugs we take as it is to study the potential benefits they bring. Alcohol is embedded in our culture and we drink for all sorts of reasons. Making a distinction between those perceived benefits and actual benefits is important.
