5 things you didn’t know could make you smarter

1. What you’re wearing
Researchers tested a group of participants on their brainpower with something called a Stroop test. The only difference between them was that half of them were dressed in a lab coat when they took the test. The results? Those wearing the lab coats only made half the mistakes of those who didn’t wear the coats.
Just to make sure this wasn’t some insane fluke, they made another test, where participants had to find the differences between similar pictures. Some of the participants wore lab coats, but some of them were told they were actually wearing painters’ coats. Again, they found that those who were wearing the lab coats scored significantly higher, even than those who were wearing the same thing but were told they were for painters.
The researchers believe that wearing a lab coat simply makes us feel smarter, and as other psychologists have found, simply believing you’re smarter actually makes you smarter.
But we know what you’re almost certainly wondering — how does this effect work with bikinis? Another study tested men and women by having them take an advanced math test, some while wearing sweaters, some in swimsuits. Afterward, they compared the scores from both outfits, and found that for women, wearing a bikini lowered their scores, but for men, it either stayed the same or increased.
2. Being in a terrible mood
Everyone prefers to go to work and come home feeling happy. It’s just not always achievable, and indeed, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys your job that much, then you’ll find that most people just want to cut you. But hold it right there, Smiles McHappyWorker — the Negative Nancy in your office is head and shoulders over you intellectually.
Multiple studies have found this. In one, Australian researcher Joe Forgas found that “angst and sadness promote ‘information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more-demanding situations’.” Forgas made participants watch short films about death and cancer, inducing a melancholy mood, and found that those subjected to the depressing short films made fewer arithmetic mistakes and had better judgment in general — they were better at recalling past events and judging the accuracy of rumours, and became less likely to judge strangers.
Then another study from the Columbia Business School found that the act of frowning makes you more attentive and detail-oriented, thus helping you avoids your gut reaction when what you really need to do is think. Researchers had participants in the study give speeches about their dream jobs, and had listeners respond either positively, nodding and smiling, or negatively, shaking their head and frowning. They were then told to record their mood afterward and create a collage. These same participants, however, became more focused on their collage, and thus churned out better, more creative work. We just think well when we’re miserable.
3. Dancing
Scientists have known for a while that the best way to stave off the mental deterioration of old age is to keep using your brain, and try to avoid careers that involve repeatedly smashing your head into things. The question is, which mental exercises work best? The answer, surprisingly, appears to be dancing — regardless of your age.
But wait, you’re thinking, dancing isn’t a mental activity! Well, maybe not the kind of dancing you do. But researchers tested a number of mental and physical activities like biking, reading, solving crosswords, swimming, golf and dancing. They found that while most physical activities offered no protection against dementia, reading and crossword solving unsurprisingly reduced the risk by up to 50 percent. But put down your crosswords — dancing offered an incredible 76 percent reduced chance of dementia.
Apparently, since dancing is so open and free to interpretation, it demands the most instant thinking. Your brain has to fire off signals to move every part of your body in crazy ways that you just don’t have to ordinarily manage. Unlike bicycling or swimming, where you eventually just fall into a routine and stop thinking about it, dancing is more dynamic. And with all this rapid thinking, your brain can’t help but grow extra neural pathways to keep up with you.
Researchers weren’t very sure which dance in particular was the best, but they suggest that any activity that promotes rapid decision making without falling into a routine would show the same benefits. And you shouldn’t wait to be a senior citizen before you consider dancing — they found that it improves mental acuity for all ages.
Also, it turns out that women benefit more than men, because women usually act as the follower in the dance routine, while men lead.
4. Cigarettes
Apparently some scientists have decided that smoking doesn’t have lots of benefits, at least if you’re one of those folks opposed to cancer and offending people. But it seems that, in the process of destroying everything else, nicotine has some beneficial effect on the brain.
Researchers at the University of Amsterdam have actually discovered that the nicotine found in cigarettes enhances both learning and memory. Since learning and memory are key areas of loss in Alzheimer’s patients, researchers tested nicotine patches on elderly people with Alzheimer’s, and found that after regular doses, they were two times faster and significantly more consistent at answering memory-based questions than the control group.
The researchers found that the nicotine was able to do this by improving communication among the learning centres in the brain. But, chances are that, if you still remember the beginning of this sentence, you probably don’t have Alzheimer’s. So this doesn’t apply to regular people, right?
Well, good news! Researchers pumped nicotine into adolescent mice, then tested them on spatial learning and memory later in their adult life and found that those who had received small, steady levels of nicotine learned faster and performed significantly better — months later.
5. Electricity to the skull
If you’re trying to actually improve your brain performance, then “Electrocute it!” probably only seems like a viable option if you’re assuming your brain works just like the robots in Short Circuit. Nevertheless, Australian researchers have created what they’re calling “transcranial direct current stimulation” (or you can go with the catchier shorthand, “thinking cap”), which delivers electric currents into the brains of brave and possibly crazy test subjects in order to test whether they can supercharge their minds.
The researchers found that after admitting these weak electrical signals, participants were far more likely to solve complex riddles than the average person. If electricity was applied to the left brain in order to suppress its “linear” style of thinking, and a different kind of current sent to the right brain in order to increase cognitive flexibility, it caused the participants to solve these riddles at three times the rate of unstimulated participants.
If you’re like most people, however, you probably don’t want to walk around with sponges, metal caps and electrical currents running into your brain 24/7. The good news is, you wouldn’t have to — amazingly, after unhooking the caps, the participants retained their complex riddle-solving abilities for six months.
Of course, these won’t be available in homes anytime soon, since it seems like the potential for accidentally fried brains is pretty high. Honestly now, how many of you didn’t just say to yourself, “If a little electrical current helps me think better, then I bet a lot would give me telepathy!” Yes, here’s to a future where many a roommate comes home to a tragic scene involving electrical outlets and the smell of charred hair.