Regular or decaffeinated coffee and subsequent human aggressive behavior.

A new methodology was used to study the effects of coffee on human aggressive behavior in a laboratory situation. Aggressive responding was elicited by subtracting money from the research subjects, an action which was attributed to a fictitious person. Regular coffee compared to decaffeinated coffee produced decreases in aggressive responses, but increased nonaggressive monetary reinforced responding. Thus, the suppressing effect of regular coffee on aggressive responding was not due to a nonspecific depressant action.