>> Smart girls turned well educated women drink more — and report more drinking problems, finds a new study. Did I mention I always did well on standardized tests as a kid and now have a PhD? The Telegraph UK quotes from the study:

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

Reasons for the positive association of education and drinking behaviours may include: a more intensive social life that encourages alcohol intake; a greater engagement into traditionally male spheres of life, a greater social acceptability of alcohol use and abuse; more exposure to alcohol use during formative years; and greater postponement of childbearing and its responsibilities among the better educated.

Find the full article at ScienceDirect. (via Freakonomics)

Earlier:
>> The smarter a woman is, the more she’ll drink? Also, more women are drinking — and women drinkers are drinking more.
>> Alcohol abstainers tend to have higher rates of depression

>> Are you smart? Or are you just good at seeming smart? A professor of philosophy delves into the difference between smartness and seeming smart:

Seeming smart is probably to a large extent about activating people’s associations with intelligence…. And what do people associate with intelligence? Some things that are good: Poise, confidence (but not defensiveness), giving a moderate amount of detail but not too much, providing some frame and jargon, etc. But also, unfortunately, I suspect: whiteness, maleness, a certain physical bearing, a certain dialect (one American type, one British type), certain patterns of prosody — all of which favor, I suspect, upper- to upper-middle class white men.

And of course, when people think you’re smart, you’re more likely to rise to meet those expectations…. (via murketing)

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