Can Smoking Make You Stupid? The Relationship Between Smoking and Intelligence
The effects of smoking on a person's physical health is well known, but if you need more reason to stop smoking cigarettes, new research affords insight into the effect of nicotine addiction on people's mental health, in particular the relationship between smoking and intelligence.
This article examines the effect of smoking, especially long-term smoking, on a person's brainpower.
But I thought smoking made me sharper? A person who starts smoking cigarettes often finds that the nicotine does indeed make them sharper.
Tests such as the Stroop test, in which a participant must identify the colour of a word when the word itself describes a different colour (or vice-versa), have shown that nicotine administration decreases the amount of time needed to perform a correct identification.
Short-term verbal recall and the ability to process large amounts of information quickly are also improved.
However, the longer a person has smoked cigarettes, the more their level of performance on such tests decrease.
The problem lies with the fact that if they do smoke before such a test, their performance goes up to the baseline level, which only seems to support the notion that cigarettes improve intelligence.
This is a classic example of how addiction works: a person can only function normally when they have ingested the substance they are addicted to, a phenomenon that also will be familiar to people dependent on alcohol and cannabis.
The relationship between smoking and intelligence Studies have shown that frequency of smoking is inversely correlated with academic performance, with nonsmokers outperforming smokers and light smokers outperforming heavy smokers.
This by itself is not enough to suggest that smoking makes you less intelligent, as less intelligent people might be more likely to smoke to begin with, or there might be other factors, such as a disturbed home life, that cause both smoking and decreased academic achievement.
Other research suggests that long-term smoking does have a negative effect on intelligence in older adults.
In a battery of psychological tests that measured, among other things, psychomotor speed, it was shown that being a smoker slowed down the reactions of the brain.
Interestingly, the study showed that there was no difference in psychomotor speed between ex-smokers and nonsmokers, suggesting that mental performance, at least in older adults, can be improved by quitting smoking.
One reason for this might be because smoking contributes to a number of physical conditions that have the effect of reducing blood flow to the brain.
Another reason might be that smoking puts the brain under "oxidative stress", which can cause cell death.
There is no reason to assume that this process is limited to older people only; it might well merely have a less significant effect on younger people.
What this suggests about how to stop smoking cigarettes A person in a state of tobacco addiction will find that, if their cognitive abilities are to be tested, that giving up smoking will, at least temporarily, make them incapable of performing tasks at the required level.
This is unfortunate because it means that under times of mental stress (and who isn't under a state of mental stress nowadays?), trying to stop smoking cigarettes will only add extra stress when a person might already be at their limit.
Intelligence is always at a premium, and the deleterious cognitive effects of nicotine withdrawal might just be too much to take on.
Luckily, examining the relationship between intelligence, stress and smoking offers some useful information.
The answer is to time your attempt to kick the habit with a period of lighter cognitive demand.
If you have a holiday coming up, decide that you won't attempt any project that requires full brainpower until you are tobacco free.
Make sure you don't let yourself get bored - use your time to carry out activities which are less mentally demanding, such as reading a book on the beach or going hiking.
The mental energy that is freed up by not working can be put to understanding something like the token economy method instead.
This article examines the effect of smoking, especially long-term smoking, on a person's brainpower.
But I thought smoking made me sharper? A person who starts smoking cigarettes often finds that the nicotine does indeed make them sharper.
Tests such as the Stroop test, in which a participant must identify the colour of a word when the word itself describes a different colour (or vice-versa), have shown that nicotine administration decreases the amount of time needed to perform a correct identification.
Short-term verbal recall and the ability to process large amounts of information quickly are also improved.
However, the longer a person has smoked cigarettes, the more their level of performance on such tests decrease.
The problem lies with the fact that if they do smoke before such a test, their performance goes up to the baseline level, which only seems to support the notion that cigarettes improve intelligence.
This is a classic example of how addiction works: a person can only function normally when they have ingested the substance they are addicted to, a phenomenon that also will be familiar to people dependent on alcohol and cannabis.
The relationship between smoking and intelligence Studies have shown that frequency of smoking is inversely correlated with academic performance, with nonsmokers outperforming smokers and light smokers outperforming heavy smokers.
This by itself is not enough to suggest that smoking makes you less intelligent, as less intelligent people might be more likely to smoke to begin with, or there might be other factors, such as a disturbed home life, that cause both smoking and decreased academic achievement.
Other research suggests that long-term smoking does have a negative effect on intelligence in older adults.
In a battery of psychological tests that measured, among other things, psychomotor speed, it was shown that being a smoker slowed down the reactions of the brain.
Interestingly, the study showed that there was no difference in psychomotor speed between ex-smokers and nonsmokers, suggesting that mental performance, at least in older adults, can be improved by quitting smoking.
One reason for this might be because smoking contributes to a number of physical conditions that have the effect of reducing blood flow to the brain.
Another reason might be that smoking puts the brain under "oxidative stress", which can cause cell death.
There is no reason to assume that this process is limited to older people only; it might well merely have a less significant effect on younger people.
What this suggests about how to stop smoking cigarettes A person in a state of tobacco addiction will find that, if their cognitive abilities are to be tested, that giving up smoking will, at least temporarily, make them incapable of performing tasks at the required level.
This is unfortunate because it means that under times of mental stress (and who isn't under a state of mental stress nowadays?), trying to stop smoking cigarettes will only add extra stress when a person might already be at their limit.
Intelligence is always at a premium, and the deleterious cognitive effects of nicotine withdrawal might just be too much to take on.
Luckily, examining the relationship between intelligence, stress and smoking offers some useful information.
The answer is to time your attempt to kick the habit with a period of lighter cognitive demand.
If you have a holiday coming up, decide that you won't attempt any project that requires full brainpower until you are tobacco free.
Make sure you don't let yourself get bored - use your time to carry out activities which are less mentally demanding, such as reading a book on the beach or going hiking.
The mental energy that is freed up by not working can be put to understanding something like the token economy method instead.
Source...