THE ESSENTIAL
- Researchers have tried to find out whether drinking coffee regularly depends on our physical condition or on attachment to a “ritual”.
- If the two reasons are valid, consumers tend to explain their attraction to this drink more by the fact of fighting fatigue.
What could be tastier than the sweet roasted aromas of coffee caressing your nostrils when you have just woken up? While some stick to this morning habit, others make it last all day. But what triggers this craving for coffee?
To answer this, researchers from the University of Southern California observed the consumption habits of this hot drink as part of a study. The scientists started from the postulate that people often tend to blame mood or impulsiveness on what is in fact habits firmly rooted in our daily lives, and this would be true with coffee.
“People can drink coffee out of habit, for example, you can automatically follow a coffee drinking routine when you wake up or go for your morning commute, regardless of how tired you are,” points out Asaf Mazar, who led the study published in the journal Psychological Science.
Fatigue is overestimated compared to usual
To reach these conclusions, the researchers carried out two separate sub-studies: the first involves 809 adults, while the second traces the daily coffee consumption of 112 American students. The participants were asked to specify what, in their opinion, encourages them to consume coffee. And according to the answers obtained, fatigue would be the “big culprit”.
Participants consider that fatigue is about twice as likely to trigger the craving for coffee as the “simple” habit. Information that the researchers did not find, after following the participants for a week. The latter are even categorical: “contrary to the explanations of the participants, the habit has as strong an influence on the consumption of coffee as the feeling of tiredness”.
According to the study authors, the discrepancy between the real and perceived role of our repeated behaviors could explain why it is so difficult to break our bad habits. However, the researchers reassure us by reminding us that if we tend to adopt bad habits, it is also possible to adopt better ones, such as exercising regularly, sorting waste or eating healthy.