The stereotype of the drunk genius is doggedly dour : Think of Ernest Hemingway , who claimed to “ write drunk , edit sober , ” or you yourself , having a well - deserved ice of wine-colored at happy hour after mete out all day with what sometimes feel like a mankind full of … not - so - bright mass , to put it kindly . This connection has driven scientist to study the question : Are smarter people heavy toper ? Here are five potty facts about imbibition and intelligence information — and what they bring up to . ( Spoiler alerting : confusion . )
1. Smart women drink more, but not more than men overall.
College educated women in aUK studydrank 86 percent more than less educated women in the same eld chemical group . Isle of Man , in general , drink11.1 percent morethan woman regardless of their intelligence stage .
2. Smart kids grow up to imbibe more.
Smarterchildrenbecome heavier drinker , according to theNational Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health(U.S. ) , theNational Child Development Study(U.K. ) and astudy from Finlandof Twin . The last one discover that the more verbal the kids were at 12 , the more likely they were to be drink at 16 .
3. Higher education = higher alcohol intake as you age.
The old you get , the moreyou drink — but only if you go to college . The National Survey on Drug and Healthuse get hold that among college graduates , 68.4 percent reported tope versus only 35.2 percent of those who did not calibrate gamy schooling .
4. Dumb men drink more, but total abstinence is linked to lower IQ.
Not - so - brilliant mendrink more , but only because they are likely to be bust drinking . And yet those whodon’t drinkat all have the lowest IQs . This is in all probability affected by “ other white plague and other endangerment factors . ” That is , at least some of them were toper who quit .
5. Finally, moderate drinkers have the highest IQ.
According to the samestudyof almost 50,000 Swiss male person , years 18 - 22 , moderation is the smartest course .
Why is there so much self-contradictory research on the human relationship between inebriant and intelligence information ? One trouble may be that most study rely on participants ' self - coverage about their alcohol intake , which is n’t the most dependable beat .
The jury may still be out on the association between your smart and your cocktails , but there is consuming evidence that sullen drink has extensivenegative health effects . So perhaps one average conclusion to draw is that being more thinking does n’t needfully make you smarter . nates up !
