Drink coffee for better and efficient team work

Coffee seems to work its magic in teams by making people more alert, said Amit Singh, from The Ohio State University.

“Not surprisingly, people who drank caffeinated coffee tended to be more alert. We found that increased alertness was what led to the positive results for team performance,” Singh said.

The results were based on twin studies, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, involving over 100 students.

The first study involved undergraduate students who took part in a coffee tasting task. While half of them were asked to drink a cup of coffee and rate its flavour at the beginning, the other half did this at the end of the experiment.

Those who drank coffee before the discussion rated themselves and their fellow team members more positively than those who drank coffee after the discussion, Singh said.

In the second study, students drank coffee at the beginning of the study, of them, half drank decaf and the others drank caffeinated brew.

Those who drank the caffeinated coffee rated themselves as more alert than those who drank decaf. They also rated themselves and their fellow group members more positively than others.

This suggested that any intervention that increases alertness (such as exercise) may also produce similar results.

People who drank caffeinated coffee were more likely than those who drank decaf to say they would be willing to work with their group again.

Further, people were found to talk more after drinking caffeine, but they also tended to stay more on topic.