Regular or decaffeinated coffee and subsequent human aggressive behavior

Caffeine as a Source of Misattribution in Police—Offender Confrontations: An Experiment with the Fire Arms Training System

“…In most studies a decrease in aggression after caffeine consumption was found (Cherek et al, 1983(Cherek et al, , 1984Taylor et al, 1991), which is in line with the above-mentioned theories of emotion and attributional processes. Ferguson et al (1982), however, found an increase in aggression after caffeine ingestion.…”

“…In this experiment patrol police officers were involved. Fourthly, in all four studies some participants were misinformed about what they had ingested (in some cases participants ingested caffeine and were led to believe that this was a placebo (Ferguson et al, 1982;Taylor et al, 1991)), in other cases participants ingested a placebo and were led to believe that they had ingested caffeine (Cherek et al, 1983(Cherek et al, , 1984Taylor et al, 1991). The authors believe that in daily life people know whether or not they have ingested caffeine.…”

“…Firstly, in the previous studies 'artificial' behaviour was investigated (such as delivering a blast of noise to another person (Cherek et al, 1983(Cherek et al, , 1984Ferguson et al, 1982;Taylor et ai., 1991), and subtracting money from another person (Cherek et al, 1983(Cherek et al, , 1984. This particular experiment dealt with more real-life behaviour, that is, police officers' performance in simulated Page 40 firearms incidents.…”

Effects of d-amphetamine on human aggressive behavior

“…The administration of the 10 mg/70 kg d-amphetamine dose resulted in statistically significant increases in the number of aggressive responses. Previous research utilizing this paradigm has indicated that the administration of other CNS stimulant drugs (nicotine and caffeine) either had no effect or decreased aggressive responses (Cherek 1981 ;Cherek et al 1983Cherek et al , 1984a. Besides the pharmacological properties of the drugs themselves, one major difference is that, in the nicotine and caffeine studies, all subjects had a long history of nicotine and caffeine self-administration.…”

“…Aggressive responding is engendered by subtracting points from the research subject which are attributed to the fictitious partner. This methodology has been found to be sensitive to the effects of smoking different doses of nicotine and the oral administration of alcohol, caffeine and coffee (Cherek 1981 ;Cherek et al 1983Cherek et al , 1984aCherek et al , 1984b. The present study employed this methodology to assess the effects of low doses of d-amphetamine on human aggessive responding.…”