Drinking a steaming hot coffee in the morning for your daily hit may be pointless, as researchers believe the ‘buzz’ is just in our heads.
To test the theory researchers from the University of East London had 88 volunteers aged between 18 and 47 drink at least two cups of coffee over a day. The volunteers were not just your average Joes. They were all self-confessed coffee addicts.
The volunteers were chosen as they reported that their mood and performance improved after drinking a cup of Joe.
With this in mind the researchers split the volunteers into two groups: caffeinated and de-caffeinated. The researchers then gave the two groups two cups of coffee each and made them perform different tasks.
The tasks were devised to record the agility, reaction times and mood of the individuals. Both groups did well in the tests but when it came to the reaction test the decaf drinkers, who thought they had caffeine inside them, did a bit better.
"The findings suggest the expectation of having consumed caffeine confers an enhancement on sustained attention that is at least comparable, and perhaps superior to, the effects of caffeine," said the researchers.