A new study claims that smelling coffee can help you score better on math tests.
According to Newsweek, drinking coffee seems to be a beneficial practice. A few cups of coffee a day may protect the heart. Many scientific studies show that coffee drinkers live longer, healthier lives and are less prone to diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes.
Recently, a study continues to confirm that coffee also brings benefits to human cognitive function.
Coffee also benefits human cognitive function.
This study indicates that the smell of coffee can make people more alert and energetic . Researchers from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey have found that people exposed to this scent score better in math when taking the Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT) – a aptitude test required by many business schools.
Adriana Madzharov, one of the study’s authors, said: “This is an interesting thing. Of course, the smell of coffee is not all that helps people perform better on analytical tasks. But those who do “Participants think they do better, and we’ve shown that the smell of coffee plays a part in improving their performance.”
Even smelling a coffee-like, caffeine-free scent produces the same effect as drinking coffee.
To test the effects of coffee smell, the researchers gave a 10-question GMAT algebra test to about 100 college students.
They filled the test room with the smell of coffee before taking the first group in for the test. A second group also performed a similar test in a room without the faint aroma of coffee.
The results showed that those who were exposed to the gentle scent of coffee seemed to be mentally stimulated and scored significantly higher.
The gentle smell of coffee seemed to be nerve-stimulating and scored higher.
After completing the test, the participants believed that their sense of the smell of coffee increased their analytical ability.
This led the researchers to believe that the coffee-like scent might have a similar placebo effect on other areas of functioning, such as verbal reasoning.
“Smell is one of our most powerful senses,” says Madzharov. “Recruiters, architects, building developers, retail managers and others can use scent to helping employees or people working together. It’s an area of great interest and potential.”