Tipsy Tuesday

How much you read has a big impact on how much you know (and, by extension, how smart you are.) According to the study "What Reading Does for the Mind" by Anne E. Cunningham (which we began looking at last week), people who read are more likely to know about how carburetors work, what vitamin is found in concentrated forms in citrus fruits, and other general facts. Regardless of general abilities, people who read more know more.

Equally important, they are less likely to be sucked in by misinformation. In an interesting test, a group of 268 college students was asked how many of the world's people are Muslim vs. Jewish. Almost 70% of these smart college kids thought Jewish people outnumbered Muslims. Actually, there are about 20 million Jewish people and more than 800 million Muslims.

Cunningham found that the more TV participants watched, the more likely they were to get that question wrong. But the more they read, the more likely they were to get the answer right. General intellectual ability didn't matter--the amount of reading versus television consumption did.

I guess there is truth in advertising when Hulu had Alec Baldwin telling us they were turning our brains to mushy mush! LOL