Moderate drinking may help improve creativity

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have found that moderate intoxication helps a person notice minor changes in a visual scene.

During tests of “change blindness,” the inability to notice minor changes, intoxicated participants detected as many changes as sober subjects and with shorter response times.

 “Both the sober and drunk people find the same number of changes, but drunk people find them faster,” said Jennifer Wiley, professor of psychology at UIC.  “Our suspicion is that the sober people are using a more systematic, methodical strategy, and the drunk people are waiting for the ‘pop out,’“ Wiley said.  They  found that participants who were slightly under the .08 percent legal limit for blood alcohol outperformed sober subjects in solving word association problems.