Hunger is associated with high levels of anger and irritability, study finds.
- A total of 9,142 responses were reviewed for the study.
- Hunger was also associated with lower levels of pleasure.
“Some people get angry when they’re hungry, but very little research has directly determined how robust the link between hunger and negative emotions is,” said researchers from universities Anglia Ruskin in the UK and Karl Landsteiner in Austria. To find out for sure, they decided to carry out a study, the results of which were published in the journal Plos One.
Measures of emotional well-being
In order to carry out their work, the scientists recruited 64 European adults. During a 21-day experiment, they had to report their hunger levels, feelings and emotions, such as anger, irritability, pleasure and excitement, at five times of the day. The volunteers entered this information into an app, which allowed the authors to collect data about their daily environments, such as their workplace and home.
negative emotions
According to research, hunger was associated with 37% irritability and 34% anger. “These results remained significant after controlling for participants’ gender, age, body mass index, eating behaviors, and characteristic anger,” can we read in the study. According to the team, negative emotions are caused by both daily fluctuations in hunger and by “residual” levels of hunger measured over a three-week period.
“While our study does not present ways to mitigate hunger-induced negative emotions, research suggests that being able to label an emotion can help people regulate it, for example by acknowledging that they are angry. simply because they are hungry. Therefore, increased awareness of being hungry could reduce the likelihood that hunger leads to negative emotions and behaviors,” explained Viren Swami, author of the study, in a statement.
