How Hunger Turns to Irritability

Have you noticed that you become grouchy when you are hungry? It was noticed by advertisers and turned into a meme. What are the psychological reasons? Most people become excitable and angry because of hunger. In English, this state was dubbed the word “hangry” – a neologism formed from the words hungry (“hungry”) and angry (“evil”). The fact that hunger affects feelings and behavior is widely known, and we find confirmation of this in advertising, memes and in the field of commerce. But, surprisingly, there have been no studies of its effect on the degree of irritability.

Psychologists are accustomed to separating hunger from other feelings, believing that a person’s bodily sensations have a different psychological and neurological basis than an emotional state. However, as scientific facts accumulate, it can be assumed that the physical state affects emotions and perception of the surrounding reality in an incredible way.

Earlier studies have found that when people are hungry, it affects their mood. The reason is probably that the feeling of hunger is directly related to the autonomic nervous system and hormones, and they, in turn, affect emotions. For example, if we get hungry, a lot of hormones are released, including cortisol and adrenaline, which are responsible for feeling stressed. As a result, a feeling of hunger, especially a strong one, makes you feel tension, discontent and a desire to rush into battle, which is fully consistent with the hormonal background.

Is this fact explained only by this or are there other reasons? This question worried me and Kristen Lindqvist when we were doing research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We wanted to find out if the negative emotions caused by hunger can affect how people perceive the world around them, and feelings in general.

In what situations does “hungry anger” manifest itself?

According to the theory of “affect as information”, mood can temporarily change the perception of the surrounding world. Therefore, when we are hungry, we tend to see things in a darker light. But the fact is that people more often succumb to a fit of feelings when they do not pay any attention to these feelings. We probably become irritable because we don’t focus on the inner sensations, but instead react only to the outside world: a terrible driver or someone’s rude comment.

To make sure that hunger really increases arousal in negative situations when people are not focused on their experiences, we designed three types of studies. The first two took place online among American adults.

Respondents were asked to look at negative, positive, and neutral images. Then they were shown vague images: a Chinese character or a pictogram that had not been seen before. After that, the participants were asked what charge the pictogram carries: positive or negative.

Hungry people who were first shown a picture of a negative character tended to think that the hieroglyphs were unpleasant to them. If they had previously been shown positive and neutral images, their responses did not differ from those of satiated participants.

It can be concluded that the irritability caused by hunger does not occur in positive and neutral situations. Hunger only matters if people face a negative stimulus. Why? The answer to this question is given by the theory of “affect as information”. People are more likely to rely on feelings as a source of information about the world around them, if feelings correspond to the circumstances in which people find themselves.

The feeling of hunger turns out to be relevant to negative situations, since hunger itself causes negative emotions. In such cases, it is easy to confuse the source of the negative.

How to set up sensations

For the final stage of the research, we created a frustrating environment in the laboratory to test how hunger and awareness (or, conversely, unawareness) affect irritability. Senior students were divided into two groups: participants in one group had to abstain from eating for five hours before coming to the laboratory, and participants in the second had lunch before the test.

Each group was given the task of writing a story. In one case, it was a story that forced you to focus on emotions, in the other it did not affect emotions. Each participant was then asked to complete a long, grueling task on a computer. The task was programmed so that at the end there was a “computer glitch” for which the researchers blamed the participant. After a failure, the job had to be rerun. They found that hungry people who didn’t focus on feelings before completing the task showed more signs of irritability. They reported experiencing stress, anger, and other negative emotions, and also tended to view the researchers as “judgmental,” in contrast to the rest of the participants: hungry, but writing a story about their emotions, and full.

The results of the study suggest that the excitability caused by hunger only manifests itself when we find a source of negativity in the outside world. For example, we think that it was the fact that we were cut off on the road that made us angry, and not the feeling of hunger at all. This is an unconscious process: people attribute the negative exclusively to external factors, without even realizing it.

According to the study, the growth of this process can be avoided by paying attention to your feelings. You can even stop feeling irritable as soon as you notice it. Although research has shed light on how a person’s physical condition affects our feelings and behavior, this is only the first step. For example, the above tests only affected those who do not complain about their health and eat regularly. It would be useful to know how this phenomenon changes with long-term diets and in cases where a person has diabetes or an eating disorder. The results of the experiment are consistent with data from new scientific directions and confirm that the physical state of the body largely shapes how we think, feel and behave, whether we realize it or not.

How to deal with irritability

There are three ways that can help overcome hunger irritability. The first way may seem obvious – to pay attention to the feeling of hunger. Everyone has a different sensitivity to bodily sensations, including hunger. Sometimes we don’t even notice that we’re hungry. A tactical trick is to carry healthy snack options with you, breakfast and lunch with protein-rich foods that give you more energy.

You can also set yourself reminders that it’s time to eat. Such simple precautions are needed in the first place so that the feeling of hunger is not taken by surprise. What to do in cases where hunger persistently reminded of itself, but you can’t eat? Since, according to research, irritability from hunger increases in negative situations, you need to take care to create a favorable environment for yourself. If there is no end in sight to a traffic jam, you can turn on an entertaining podcast, and if a deadline is hanging over your head, relaxing music will help. In a word, create for yourself a positive improvised means.

The third way is awareness. She changes everything. Even in situations where hunger and growing irritability are accompanied by negativity, for example, offensive words from a partner or the same burning deadline. In the heat of feelings, it is useful to take a step back and listen to yourself – perhaps your stomach is growling? Realizing that hunger is also to blame for our negative emotions will help us stay ourselves, even when we are very hungry.