Having a drink or two is welcomed now. Surprisingly, drinking two pints of beer or two medium glasses of wine alcohol can sharpen your mind, say researchers.
The study conducted by University of Illinois has found that men who enjoy a relaxing drink are actually better at solving brain teasers than those who are stone cold sober, Daily mail reported.
The psychologists conducted the study on 40 healthy young men, out of which half of them were given drinks before doing the test. They consumed alcohol which is equivalent to two pints of beer. The other half participated in the test without taking any drinks.
The researchers set the participants in a series of brain teasers. These involved being given three words such as coin, quick and spoon and coming up with a fourth word that links all the three (in this case the word being silver).
When compared the performance of both the groups during the test, it was found that thirstier chaps were really quicker in delivering the right answers than the sober ones.
Contradictory to the concept of alcohol hinders analytical thinking, the research claims that it makes easier to find imaginative solutions to problems.
The drinking group solved nearly 40 percent more problems than the others. They just took an average of 12.2 seconds per questions, whereas the sober subjects too 15.5 seconds.
"The current research represents the first demonstration of alcohol effect on creative problem solving", said the researchers.
"We tested what happens when people are slightly merry-not when people drink to extremes," said co-author Jennifer Wiley.
"The bottom line is that we think being too focused can blind you to novel possibilities, and a broader, more flexible state of attention is needed for creative solutions to emerge," she added.
'It is an interesting idea and does make sense," said Professor Richard Wiseman, psychologist of University of Hertfordshire .
The researchers described their findings in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.
