Does Coffee Make Us
More Creative?
The Impact of Coffee and Priming with Coffee
Consumption on Creativity
Agenda
1. Coffee and Creativity
2. Priming with Coffee Consumption
3. Research Questions & Conceptual Model
4. Hypotheses
5. Design & Procedure
6. Results
7. Conclusions
8. Implications for Marketing
Coffee and Creativity
• Caffeine, the main ingredient of coffee is the most widely used psychoactive substance, with 80% of the world’s population consuming a caffeinated product on a daily basis (Einöther & Giesbrecht, 2013).
• For ages people have used caffeine to trigger creative thought (Braun, 1996).
• Some of the main benefits of caffeine are improved concentration and mental alertness (Mitchell et al., 2014)
• As prior studies have proved, coffee significantly increases the concentration, problem solving ability, and the performance on attention tasks (Einöther &
Giesbrecht, 2013).
• No studies have yet directly linked coffee consumption to creativity, defined as an ability to produce both novel and appropriate work (Takeuchi, et al., 2011), at the
Priming with Coffee Consumption
• Priming is defined as the ‘incidental activation of knowledge structures, such as trait concepts and stereotypes, by the current situational context’
(Bargh, Chen & Burrows, 1996)
• Literature:
o Activation of alcohol concept resulted in weakened performance on cognitive tasks. (Van Koningsbruggen & Stroebe, 2011)
o Exposure to marijuana-related primes can negatively influence the performance on a subsequent mathematical task (Hicks et al., 2009)
o People believe that coffee helps them access their creativity in
Research Questions
1. Does consuming different doses of coffee make people more creative? 2. Does priming with coffee consumption make people more creative? 3. Does priming with coffee consumption moderate an effect of coffee
Hypotheses
› H1: Consuming high dosage of coffee (vs. low dosage) positively influences person’s
performance on the creativity task.
• Coffee significantly increases the concentration, problem solving ability, and the performance on attention tasks (Einöther & Giesbrecht, 2013).
• Consuming a second cup of coffee during the day may positively affect mood and cognitive performance (Heatherley et al., 2005).
› H2: Priming with coffee consumption (vs. neutral priming) positively influences person’s
performance on the creativity task.
• Coffee is strongly associated with creativity. For ages people have used caffeine to trigger creative thought (Braun, 1996).
• Consumption priming is effective in triggering substance-related associations (e.g. Van Koningsbruggen & Stroebe (2011), Hicks et al. (2009), Stein et al. (2000) )
› H3: The positive impact of the dosage of consumed coffee on creativity is moderated by
priming with coffee consumption
• Greater or more recent experience with a substance can facilitate the activation of expectancy associations(Goldman, 1999) positive effect of coffee consumption on creativity may be stronger
Conceptual Model
Creativity
Dosage of Coffee
Priming with Coffee
Consumption
H1(+)
Design: Field Experiment
2 x 2 between-subjects factorial design: • IV:
o Dosage of Coffee:
o High Dosage: afternoon condition o Low Dosage: morning condition
o Priming:
o Priming with Coffee Consumption o Neutral Priming
• DV:
o Creativity: number of correctly solved items on the creativity task (RAT)
o Persistence: time spent on solving the creativity task
• Control variables: openness to experience, average coffee consumption, gender, age, need state, impact expectancy
Dosage
Priming
Low High
Coffee I II
Procedure & Sample Characteristics
Sample size: 100 participants (25 per treatment)
• Mean age: 22
• Std. Deviation: 2.27 • Minimum: 18
• Maximum: 32
Introduction Priming Task
Results
H1: The main effect of the dosage failed to reach the level of significance (F (1, 90) = .32, ns).
H2: The main effect of the priming factor was significant (F (1, 90) = 4.91, p = .03).
H3: The interaction between dosage and priming was marginally significant
(F (1,90) = 3.57, p = .06).
Persistence:
• Participants primed with coffee consumption were more
persistent in solving the RAT task compared to the participants in the neutral priming condition
Conclusions
• Participants in the high dosage condition (vs. low dosage) were not more successful or more persistent in solving the creativity task. [H1 rejected]
• Priming participants with the concept of coffee had a positive impact on their creativity. [H2 supported]
• The positive effect of the dosage of coffee on the creativity was stronger when participants were primed with coffee consumption. This effect was observed only in the high dosage condition. [H3 partly supported]
Creativity Dosage of Coffee
Priming with Coffee Consumption
+
Implications for Marketing
• Single activation of the concept of coffee consumption makes people behave in a more creative way.
• Brands can be perceived as creative when they are associated with coffee.
• The research does not support the claim that coffee as such makes us more creative, but it shows the
associations with coffee in people’s minds are so strong that even a thought about coffee can trigger creative behavior
• Priming affects mostly the people that are under the
Limitations and Future Research
Limitation Directions for the Future
The conditions were based on the time of day, not on the actual consumption level
The dose of coffee should be administered by the experimenter to clearly distinguish between low
and high dosage conditions
It was unfeasible to randomly select only the regular coffee drinkers
Lab study selecting only the regular coffee drinkers
Participants were only asked to report the amount of coffee they consume, not taking into account other
sources of caffeine such as energy drinks
The experiment should account for the consumption of all drinks containing caffeine.
Not all the factors influencing creativity were controlled for
References
• Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, 230 - 244.
• Einöther, S. J., & Giesbrecht, T. (2013). Caffeine as an attention enhancer: reviewing existing assumptions.
Psychopharmacology, 251–274.
• Fink, A., Grabner, R. H., Gebauer, D., Reishofer, G., Koschutnig, K., & Ebner, F. (2010). Enhancing creativity by means of cognitive stimulation: Evidence from an fMRI study. NeuroImage 52, 1687–1695.
• Goldman, M. S. (1999). Risk for substance abuse: Memory as a common etiological pathway. Psychological Science, 196-198
• Heatherley, S. V., Hayward, R. C., Seers, H. E., & Rogers, P. J. (2005). Cognitive and psychomotor performance, mood, and pressor effects of caffeine after 4, 6 and 8 h caffeine abstinence. Psychopharmacology 178, 461-470.
• Hicks, J. A., Pedersen, S. L., McCarthy, D. M. & Friedman, R. S. (2009). Marijuana Primes, Marijuana Expectancies, and Arithmetic Efficiency. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 70, 391–399.
• Mitchell, D. C., Knight, C. A., Hockenberry, J., Teplansky, R., & Hartman, T. J. (2014). Beverage caffeine intakes in the U.S. Food and Chemical Toxicology 63, 136–142.
• Takeuchi, H., Taki, Y., Hashizume, H., Sassa, Y., Nagase, T., Nouchi, R., & Kawashima, R. (2011). Failing to deactivate: The association between brain activity during a working memory task and creativity. NeuroImage 55, 681–687.
