Drinking coffee makes you more open-minded
14:31 05 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9280&feedId=online-news_rss20
"The coffee you drink as a pick-me-up in the morning could also make
you more open to persuasion, researchers say. Evidence from a new
study suggests that this happens because caffeine revs up the brain,
not because it generally boosts mood.
Previous studies have show that consuming caffeine can improve one’s
attention and enhance cognitive performance, with 200 milligrams
(equivalent to two cups of coffee) being the optimal dose.
Moderate doses of caffeine can also make you more easily convinced by
arguments that go against your beliefs, say Pearl Martin of the
University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues.
In 2005, her team published a paper suggesting that the compound
primes people to agree with statements that go against their typical
views because it improves their ability to understand the reasoning
behind the statements.
Cooperative mood
But what if people were more likely to agree with others’ views simply
because drinking coffee put them in a better mood?
To answer this question the team embarked on a new experiment
involving nearly 150 volunteers. Subjects were asked about their
attitude to controversial medical practices, such as voluntary
euthanasia.
The participants were then given an orange-flavoured drink that either
contained roughly 200 milligrams of caffeine or lacked the compound
completely. Forty minutes later, when caffeine levels typically peak
after consumption, subjects read arguments selected to contradict the
particular opinion they held.
In order to determine whether caffeine made people more open to
persuasion because it was promoting better mental function, or because
it was improving mood, Martin’s team also threw distracting tasks into
the mix. In one part of the experiment, researchers asked volunteers
to cross out the letter ‘o’ whenever it appeared in the text. In
another part, they asked volunteers to wear headphones and
discriminate between high and low-pitched notes by pressing a button
as they read the arguments that contradicted their opinions.
Poor concentration
Volunteers who had consumed the caffeine drink were more likely to
change their point of view than those who hadn’t. However, the more
distracted subjects were, the less likely they were to have their
views altered.
This, say the authors of the study, supports the idea that better
mental function – rather than better mood – is the reason that coffee
could make a person more easily persuaded, because the volunteers were
only more open to persuasion when they could concentrate on and
assimilate the persuasive argument.
In light of these findings, people who gulp down lattes at business
meetings may want to reconsider how the drink is affecting them, the
authors suggest."
Journal reference: European Journal of Social Psychology (DOI:
10.1002/ejsp.347)
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