Something to consider before forking out $3.50 for your next latte.
A new study from Australian and Canadian researchers suggests that merely being exposed to mental ‘cues’ about coffee is enough to perk our brains up and make us more likely to concentrate on the task at hand.
The researchers ran four different experiments where they prompted participants to brainstorm slogans for a fake coffee manufacturer, and then measured their focus levels and heart rates.
Amazingly, exposing the participants to thoughts of coffee resulted in better concentration.
An interesting note: the study only found this to be the case for people from Western countries – because they’re more likely to mentally link coffee with ideas like alertness, ambition or productivity.
The research showed that coffee cues has almost no additional effect on people from cultures where tea-drinking is more common – such as Japan, China and Korea.
Time to wake up and think about that coffee.
