Study: coffee improves positive perception
66 subjects should distinguish real words from meaningless terms on the computer screen. This worked much better with positive words like flirt, humor and wealth under the influence of caffeine than with negative or neutral words. Lars kuchinke and vanessa lux present their study in the current issue of the scientific journal "PLOS ONE".
That coffee drinkers had a more positive view of the world, however, was "unfortunately not directly" the case, kuchinke said on wednesday. Also, "whether the effect affects the reading of an entire text, we can’t say at the moment". In the test with individual words, at any rate, the effect was shown after taking a tablet with 200 milligrams of caffeine. According to the study, this corresponds to about two to three cups of coffee.
The effect is to be observed above all in the left brain half. This may be due to the fact that the left hemisphere of the brain is primarily responsible for processing words. Kuchinke, however, suspects another reason behind this, since the caffeine must otherwise also have an effect on negative words. It is possible that "in principle there is a link between the processing of positive information and the left half of the brain".
