Caffeine a Drug of Persuasion
Did you know that if you are under the influence of caffeine, you are easier to persuade than you are when you’ve had no caffeine?
I just found out about this interesting study out of Queensland, Australia which tested caffeine’s persuasive effects.
The Caffeine Persuasion Study
In the study, researchers tried to influence a group of students’ beliefs regarding euthanasia. They picked a group of students that were opposed to voluntary euthanasia and tried to persuade them to change their beliefs. Half of the group received a moderate amount of caffeine, while the other half received a placebo.
At the end of the study, more of the caffeine drinkers were persuaded to change their beliefs than the non-caffeine drinkers. This is pretty interesting because at least 80% of people in the USA consume moderate amounts of caffeine daily. The researchers believe that caffeine has a persuasive effect because it causes the brain to be more alert and therefore able to process and stay focused on the persuasive argument.
Uses of Caffeine Persuasion
What practical things can we learn from this study, you ask?
- When asking your parents for something, give them coffee first.
- Ask people out on a date at Starbucks rather than a bar.
- Don’t have caffeine before going to the car dealership!
- Skip the free coffee offered at the multi-level marketing seminar.
- If you see bald people in white robes passing out free energy drinks, run the other way!
Can you think of any other situations the persuasive effects of caffeine could come into play?
Image credit: Illuminaut
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This doesn’t necessarily mean that caffeine makes you easier to persuade. It could mean that you just pay more attention to the argument. If the argument were a bad one, you might find that people drinking caffeine were -less- likely to accept it. This study, while interesting, seems like it was too narrow to decide much of anything.
I would be interested in seeing some followup studies, though!
This is another example of a terrible study and bad science. there is no evidence here suggesting that caffeine makes you more swayable.
all we have here is this “a group who was against something. an argument was presented to dissuade them. some people changed their minds. some of these people had caffiene, at least one or more people more who had caffiene changed their mind than people who didn’t.”
the flaw in this kind of study is that key information is left out to make it look like they’re doing actual science and not just wasting time. There are no exact numbers, and no real control group, and by real control group, conduct the same experiment and give no one caffeine, and they should also conduct the same experiment and give everyone caffeine really, and then repeat about 100 times for each of the 3 groups.
I mean, if they had a group of 20 people, gave 10 of them caffeine, and 3 people changed their opinions, all it takes is 2 of them to have had caffeine to make this article true. so one more caffeine drinker than non caffeine drinker changed their mind. big woop! I mean, if 8 caffeine drinkers changed their mind and 2 non drinkers did, then you have an interesting result, but still no conclusive evidence of anything.
nothing is said of how strongly each individual opposed it. it could simply be a coincidence that people who are easily persuaded just happened to all be given caffeine by random chance, while people who were dedicated to their beliefs happen to be in the group that didn’t.
This occurs because a group wants to prove something, and want to slander caffeine, or prove that it’s bad in some way, so they look like they’ve accomplished something. so, they’ll take the experiment and present the results in a way that supports their cause. This is done with many issues. People just don’t seem to know how to run a conclusive study.
I mean, if you ran the study the way I suggested, and find that with a group of 20 who aren’t taking caffeine, 20 half and half, and 20 who are all taking caffeine, that the amount of people who were persuaded is about the same in each group, then you would only have reason to believe that caffeine may not play a role at all! but you’d have to repeat it many many times to be able to come to a conclusion.
100 times, and you can reasonably come up with a conclusion. 1000 times and you can be really sure, but still not absolutely, 1,000,000 and you will get more accurate results.
the more times, the more accurate the info.