Caffeine promotes a positive outlook on the world

Researchers have found that caffeine helps people see the world in brighter colors and choose positive words. Past research has shown that people are faster and more accurate at recognizing positive words such as "happy" than negative ones such as "crazy."

Moreover, the same effect is observed with pictures and sounds. These emotional shifts are very interesting, given that people are equally good at remembering both positive and negative details of an event, such as words, pictures and sounds.

"What is the reason for this difference?" asks researcher Lars Kuhinke, an experimental psychologist at Ruhr University in Germany. To understand what contributes to this “positive” benefit, experts decided to experiment with caffeine. Caffeine helps people react faster and make fewer mistakes when solving simple mental problems, and it might be expected to help people recognize both positive and negative words.

Scientists asked 66 volunteers to decide, as quickly and accurately as possible, whether the letters they saw on a screen were real words or just a bunch of letters. Half of the subjects were given one lactose tablet, which did not affect the results, while the other half were given one tablet containing 200 milligrams of caffeine, the equivalent of two or three cups of coffee, 30 minutes before testing.

The researchers found that volunteers who consumed the caffeine pill were 7 percent more accurate at identifying positive words. However, when identifying emotionally neutral or negative words, no difference was visible. This shows that although caffeine improves some mental functions, "the present study demonstrates that this may be specific to certain types of stimulus, such as positive words."

Previous research has shown that caffeine likely stimulates the central nervous system, increasing the activity of dopamine, which is associated with reward, creativity and impulsivity. Since caffeine appears to increase a positive outlook on the world, it can be assumed that all positive benefits are associated with dopamine.

Future studies using brain scans could test whether there is a link between caffeine and people's recognition of positive facial expressions.

Source: medinfo.ua