People who are dependent on caffeine tend to score higher on tests of impulsiveness and sensation-seeking than nondependent adults. The same is true of people who use more dangerous drugs than caffeine.
However, unlike other drug users, the caffeine-dependent do not score high on tests of risk-taking, according to a study published in the August issue of APA’s Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology (Vol. 13, No. 3).
The study shows that many adults struggle with a drug some consider to be harmless, says study author Heather Jones, a fifth-year clinical psychology student at the University of Maryland. Where the caffeine dependence may lead? Read more here.
Categories: Addiction,Caffeine,Coffee,Impulsiveness
In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee. The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated.
On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.
That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.
The new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it chooses. See the full article here.
Categories: Conscious,Mind,Subconscious,Unconscious
People who are dependent on caffeine tend to score higher on tests of impulsiveness and sensation-seeking than nondependent adults. The same is true of people who use more dangerous drugs than caffeine.