Questions this chapter answers
- Does caffeine make people easier to persuade?
In a 2005 experiment it did — but by making people engage with the argument more thoroughly, not by making them docile.
- Does caffeine help creativity?
In a 2020 trial of 80 people, 200 mg improved convergent thinking, solving the problem in front of them, and did nothing for divergent thinking.
- What do studies actually show about psilocybin and the brain?
- Is it true that caffeine makes people compliant and psychedelics make them free?
Short answers only. Chapter 13 gives the full account, with 4 footnotes to 4 sources.
Sources
4 footnotes to 4 sources. Full references are in the bibliography.
- Martin, Pearl Y., Jenny Laing, Robin Martin and Melanie Mitchell. “Caffeine, Cognition, and Persuasion: Evidence for Caffeine Increasing the Systematic Processing of Persuasive Messages.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35, no. 1 (2005): 160–182. DOI 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2005.tb02098.x.
- Zabelina, Darya L. and Paul J. Silvia. “Percolating Ideas: The Effects of Caffeine on Creative Thinking and Problem Solving.” Consciousness and Cognition 79 (2020): 102899. DOI 10.1016/j.concog.2020.102899.
- Shao, Ling-Xiao, Clara Liao, Ian Gregg et al. “Psilocybin Induces Rapid and Persistent Growth of Dendritic Spines in Frontal Cortex in vivo.” Neuron 109, no. 16 (2021): 2535–2544.e4. DOI 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.06.008.
- Lyons, Taylor and Robin L. Carhart-Harris. “Increased Nature Relatedness and Decreased Authoritarian Political Views after Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 32, no. 7 (2018): 811–819. DOI 10.1177/0269881117748902.