It’s a common occurrence: go too long without eating, and you start to feel a bit… irritated, to put it politely. Things that might not have bothered you with a full stomach now cause clenched fists and a throbbing vein on your forehead.
Until now, feeling “hungry”—angry because you’re hungry—has been described in a general, colloquial sense, rather than a scientific one. But when a social psychologist learned he was hungry, he decided to investigate the emotion further (presumably after snacking).
« [The research] happened partly because my wife often says I’m hungry, but I didn’t think being hungry was real,” said Professor Viren Swami, lead author of the study at Anglia Ruskin University. But mainly because I’m interested in the impact of hunger and food on human emotions and behaviors. »
Swami and his colleagues are the first to specifically study the feeling of suspension, but previous laboratory research has found links between hunger and mood.
“In some non-human species, food deprivation has been shown to increase motivations to engage in aggression to obtain food resources,” Swami said. “In humans, hunger has been examined in relation to mood and behavior difficulties, particularly in children, but the results have been mixed. »
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For the new study, 64 Central European adults were asked to record their emotions and level of hunger at various times during their day. Over a three-week period, the researchers found that fluctuations in anger, irritability and unpleasantness were strongly linked to hunger.
In fact, hunger was responsible for 34% of the variation in anger feelings among the participants. For feelings of irritability, hunger was 37 percent responsible.
Swami’s study has shown this link, but the exact reason why hunger makes us more irritable is still unknown.
Some suggestions have been made – it could be linked to low blood glucose levels, which have been shown in previous experiments to increase impulsivity and aggression. Or, lack of food can affect a person’s self-control and regulation, which some say triggers negative emotions like anger. But the current study focused on finding the link, not why it was there.
As for those who are hungry, Swami said that greater awareness of the feeling itself could reduce the likelihood of hunger leading to negative emotions and behaviors in individuals.
“While our study does not present ways to mitigate the negative emotions induced by hunger, research suggests that being able to label an emotion can help people regulate it, for example by recognizing that we feel angry. just because we are hungry,” Swami said. .
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