A lot of fascinating discussions about what's going on in your brain - such as the implications of binge drinking, the rise of depression, and the symptoms of concussions - are bubbling this week.

Do intelligent people drink more?

A blog post in Psychology Today claiming that more intelligent people are more likely to binge drink has met with some heated reaction. The author Satoshi Kanazawa wrote in October that "more intelligent children, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, grow up to consume alcohol more frequently and in greater quantities than less intelligent children." The basis of this argument: Data showing correlations between education level and drinking.

His explanation is that alcohol consumption is relatively recent in human history, and intelligent creatures seek evolutionarily novel stimuli. In fact, that was also the rationale behind a highly controversial study from earlier this year suggesting that higher IQ is linked to liberalism, atheism, and male sexual exclusivity.

Kanazawa's blog post has come under fire in the Huffington Post and an even more scathing critique in Psychology Today. Education, psychologist Stanton Peele points out in these publications, is not equivalent to intelligence. Also, college graduates are the "most likely to drink but the least likely to binge drink," according to a government survey he cites. And, moderate drinking has been associated with health benefits such as lower cardiovascular risk.

But as to whether evolutionary psychology as a whole is "dangerous bull--," as Peele suggests, is perhaps not so clear-cut....
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