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​Smartest People Are Heaviest Drinkers, According To Study

​Smartest People Are Heaviest Drinkers, According To Study

Women with educational qualifications were 71 percent more likely to drink most days, while men were 49 percent more likely

Jess Hardiman

Jess Hardiman

There's a lot of bad and disappointing news in the world right now - especially for any country that was sadly robbed of a World Cup victory this week... so, anyone but France, the lucky LADs.

But it's not all doom and gloom! And that's because a recent study has concluded that the world's smartest people are also the heaviest drinkers, meaning you might not have to feel quite as bad about all the dumb stuff you did when you were out last night.

The study, which was carried out at the London School of Economics and followed the lives of thousands of 39-year-olds, showed that women with degrees are almost twice as likely to drink daily as their counterparts who opted against university.

Don't worry, there was a similar correlation for men, too.

"The more educated women are, the more likely they are to drink alcohol on most days and to report having problems due to their drinking patterns," the report states.

"The better-educated appear to be the ones who engage the most in problematic patterns of alcohol consumption."

The research found that women with educational qualifications were 71 percent more likely to drink most days, while men were 49 percent more likely.

via GIPHY

And that's not the only bit of science you can throw at the haters - recent data from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) in the UK found that there is a clear association between childhood intelligence and the amount of alcohol consumed when people are in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

Children under 16 were marked on a cognitive scale from 'very bright' to 'very dull' (yeah, bit harsh), with the former children possessing an IQ of over 125, and the latter with an IQ of under 75.

The study found that 'very bright' British kids grow up to consume alcohol almost one full standard deviation more frequently than their 'very dull' classmates. 'Very dull' respondents 'almost never get drunk, while the 'very bright' respondents 'get drunk once every month or so', the study says.

Oh, and Finnish researchers also came to a similar conclusion in 2013, after gathering data on 3,000 fraternal and identical twins and finding that the first to develop verbal ability also tended to be both the first to try alcohol and to drink more heavily throughout adolescence.

Warner Bros.

"Good language skills reduce the likelihood of peer rejection [...] higher social activity predicts more frequent drinking in adolescence," wrote the authors.

Why's the link there? Well, Psychology Today reckons it's because drinking is 'evolutionarily novel' - as in, there was a time when we didn't get drunk, but now we do.

According to Psychology Today, human consumption of alcohol was 'unintentional, accidental, and haphazard' until about 10,000 years ago.

"The intentional fermentation of fruits and grain to yield ethanol arose only recently in human history," writer Satoshi Kanazawa says on the site.

Either way, it's pretty good news, huh?

Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Topics: Science, World News, News, Interesting, Alcohol, Drinking