5 Things You Won't Believe Are Making You Dumber

5 Meetings (And Group Projects in General) Slow Down Your Brain

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to work with other people (like a meeting at work or forming groups in school) and suddenly felt like everyone involved was suddenly dumber than normal? It's not just that you hate everyone you're working with (and that they hate you, too) -- it's science.

It turns out that just being in meetings and group situations can drain your brain. In a study done by researchers who probably wished they were working alone, they found that when people are made to work together in small groups, their brains start freezing on them like an old computer running Windows Vista. There are a couple of reason for this; one, they have to focus more on interaction and behavior (think of all the brainpower that goes into not scratching your ass in front of others) instead of the task at hand, and two, because their status within the group is affecting their performance. Confidence matters, and it's hard to keep it up when you're working around assholes.

So, the more competitive the group is, the dumber some of its members will become. For the study, people with similar IQs were put into groups of five and ranked for their performance on mental tests. When the results were shown to the entire group, those who came out last started performing significantly worse for the next tests: They felt dumb compared to the rest, so they screwed up more than they would if they were working alone. The researchers believe that the same thing happens in more subtle ways in everyday life. Some people simply function better on their own.

This gets even more complicated if your work group includes both men and women. Overall, the women in the study performed worse in a group setting than the men ... but you also have to take into account the fact that men in general turn into idiots just by being around women. No, seriously: Another study shows that men perform 14 percent more poorly on mental tasks when they think that a woman is watching them.

And no, the same thing didn't happen to women in the opposite scenario. We'll let you guess what made the difference there.

If you've ever traveled from one continent to another, you know what being jet-lagged is like: You may find yourself wide awake at 3 a.m. or falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon because you left your internal clock at another time zone. But, whatever, as long as you're getting your eight hours, you should be OK in a day or so. Hey, at least you got to see the world, so maybe you should stop whining and be thankful, damn it! Oh, except for the part where jet lag is making you an idiot.

Seriously, the more often you are jet-lagged, the more your brain suffers for it, and we're afraid it's permanent. In a study conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, a group of hamsters were subjected to six-hour time shifts -- the equivalent of a New York-to-Paris time shift, or a hangover that lasts way too long. After a couple of weeks of this, they found that those hamsters had trouble learning stuff and couldn't pass tests that other hamsters had aced. But, you know, that was to be expected, since the hamsters were pretty tired and all -- the surprising part is that even a whole month after the hamsters had readjusted their schedules, they were still stupid compared to the others.

The act of constantly resetting their body clocks had actually changed the anatomy of their brains -- their hippocampus only had 50 percent of the neurons that other hamsters had, which affected their memory and their ability to learn. And this wasn't from lack of sleep: The jet-lagged hamsters got exactly as much pillow time as all the others; the only thing that changed was the hours in which they did it.

So how do we know that this isn't like some super specific problem that affects rodents only? Because the same symptoms have already been found in people with jobs that involve constant time shifts ... we just didn't know why this happened or how permanent the damage was. Flight attendants, for example, have been found to have severe memory loss ... but that small fact is usually overlooked by their increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer.

3 Getting Spanked as a Child Lowers Your IQ

For reasons that only our ancestors understood, at some point it was decided that it was acceptable to hit a child for misbehaving, as long as you did it on his or her ass. And while some of you may insist that hundreds of spankings turned you into the responsible adult you are today, science says it might also have made you stupider in the process.

According to research done by the University of New Hampshire, the IQs of unspanked toddlers were on average five points higher than those of their bruised-assed peers ... even four years after the spanking took place. In fact, the more often a kid was spanked, the lower his IQ was. They also found that nations where spanking is still socially acceptable today had lower national IQs than nations that look down on it.

Researchers say that kids who were spanked actually showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder -- the same condition war veterans get from watching people's heads get blown off (which is associated with low IQs).

Trauma in newborn babies has an even more negative effect, since their brains are just being formed. So what counts as trauma for kids of that age? Letting them cry.

Yes, because your parents were too sleepy to give you a new bottle, you're not the next Bill Gates. A study from the University of Pittsburgh has found that letting babies "cry it out" can lead to permanent brain damage. Rather than teaching them to be more independent, parents who don't comfort their babies when they start crying at night are actually doing the opposite: Infants tend to shut down when faced with distress, stop growing emotionally, stop trusting, and eventually stop feeling. And these are the people who will be picking your nursing home one day.

2 Junk Food Ruins Your Brain

We all know that junk food is bad for our bodies, but you're probably smart enough to eat in moderation and exercise plenty afterward. Or at least you would be, if eating that stuff hadn't been knocking IQ points off your head since you were a kid.

Studies have found that the more junk food a kid eats at age 3, the likelier it'll be that he has a lower IQ at age 8. At the same time, kids who ate healthier at age 3 weren't just fitter later on, but also smarter (thus justifying any smugness they might display while beating up your dumb kids). For children with a diet rich in Cheetos and Taco Bell, this translates into poor social, cognitive and behavioral skills, all because they lacked the necessary fats, vitamins and minerals their young brains needed to develop properly.

"But Cracked, I'm not a kid," you might be saying. "My brain is fully developed by now, I don't have to worry about food making me dumber. Screw kids!" Well, it turns out that's not true, and poor choice of words there, buddy. Researchers, in their constant effort to ruin everything you love, have found in another study that sugar is also making us stupid, whether we're kids or not.

This time they taught rats how to go through a maze, and then put those rats on a diet of either a sugary drink or water. Six weeks later, the rats who had been drinking sugar had much more difficulty completing the maze, and not just because it was harder for their fat asses to fit through the corridors. They were slower, their memories had been affected and their cognitive abilities had been pretty much shattered, simply because the prolonged sugar overdose had made their bodies more resistant to insulin (which doesn't just affect your blood sugar level, but also the way your brain cells work).

So wait, the Pepsi ad with the smart monkeys was BULLSHIT?!

The good news is that the researchers also found that foods with omega-3 fatty acids counteract the stupidity produced by the sugar. So instead of drinking that Coke on a hot summer day, just down a bottle of olive oil instead.

1 Living in a City Makes You Dumber

If you're reading this, chances are you live in a city: As of 2008, most people in the world do. And while us asphalt dwellers love feeling superior to those dumb country folk, in reality they're the ones who should be making fun of us: It turns out that living in a city isn't just majorly stressing you out, it's also screwing up your intelligence.

Researchers believe they have proved that just living in modern cities is messing up our brains. They conducted an experiment that required half of the subjects to walk through a busy city and the other half to walk through a park. Afterward, the researchers performed some tests and found that those who had gone through the city had worse memory, poor attention and learning problems. And the most insane part? Even seeing pictures of a city brings out these symptoms.

The reason is actually pretty simple: Walking through a city is pretty taxing for your brain because your attention is divided by a shitload of things. Even if you don't realize it, your brain is keeping track of all the lights and sounds and smells and bums grabbing your privates, while at the same time trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and not getting run over by cars. After a while, your brain is so tired that you're left with memory problems and poor self-control. Researchers think this makes you more likely to buy things on impulse and indulge yourself by eating junk food (which, as we've discussed, doesn't really help you not get any dumber).

Meanwhile, walking through or just looking at vegetation relaxes people and makes their brains work more efficiently -- and no, we're not talking about an empty meadow where there's literally nothing to distract you. Much like a city, the vegetation can grab your attention, but in a positive and brain-restoring way. In fact, researchers have found that the more diverse the vegetation, the more it helps you focus, improves your memory and generally makes you smarter. But there are also lots of bugs around places like that, so it's probably not worth it in the long run.

Find more from XJ on his blog. He would also appreciate any followers on his Twitter.

For more ways you aren't as smart as you think you are, check out 5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think. Or allow Cracked to boost your IQ in The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You In School.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out The Sneaky Lie Your Apple Devices Are Telling You.

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