Lars Kuchinke, a German researcher at Ruhr University, and his team have discovered that coffee is a likely source of happiness. They really didn’t have to spend the money on this research project, I could have told them for free that coffee makes people happy.
The researchers asked 66 people, half of which were given 200 mg of caffeine 30 minutes prior, to quickly look at a computer and determine whether or not they saw any words in the string of letters presented on the screen. The half that were given caffeine, as opposed to those that received a placebo, were 7% more accurate in picking out positive words.
Lars Kuchinke believes that this is because caffeine stimulates the part of the brain that is responsible for positive thoughts. “Although caffeine improves some mental functions, our study shows this may be specific for certain types of stimuli, like only positive words,’ he said.
Caffeine consumption leads to more accuracy and faster response times in simple tasks. It is believed that caffeine increases a brain chemical known as dopamine, which is linked with rewards, creativity, impulsive and addiction.