FEELING ‘HANGRY’ IS REAL, AND THERE’S SCIENCE TO PROVE IT
Scientists tracking people’s food intake and emotions have shown that being hungry really can make us angry
“In some non-human species, food deprivation increases motivation to engage in aggression”
It’s a common phenomenon: go too long without eating, and you start to feel a little... irritated, to put it politely. Things that might not have bothered you on a full stomach now elicit clenching fists and a pulsing vein on your forehead.
Until now, feeling ‘hangry’ – angry because you’re hungry – has been described in a general, colloquial sense, rather than a scientific one. But when one social psychologist was told they were hangry, they decided to investigate the emotion in more detail (presumably after having a snack).
“[The research] came about partly because my wife is often saying that I’m hangry, but I didn’t think being hangry was real,” said Prof Viren Swami, the study’s lead author at Anglia Ruskin University. “But mainly because I’m interested in the impact of hunger and eating on human emotions and behaviours.”
Swami and colleagues are the first to study the feeling of hanger specifically, but previous research in lab settings has pointed to links between hunger and mood.
“In some non-human species, food deprivation has been shown to increase motivations to engage in aggression to gain food resources,” said Swami. “In humans, hunger has been examined in relation to mood and behavioural difficulties, especially in children, but results have been mixed.” For the new study, 64 adults from central Europe were asked to record their emotions and their hunger levels at several points throughout their day. Over a threeweek period, the researchers found that fluctuations in anger, irritability and unpleasantness were strongly linked with hunger.
In fact, hunger was responsible for 34 per cent of the variation in feelings of anger for participants. For feelings of irritability, hunger was 37 per cent responsible.
The exact reason why hunger makes us irritable is still unknown. A number of suggestions have been made – it could be linked to low blood glucose levels, which have been shown in previous experiments to increase impulsiveness and aggression. Or perhaps the lack of food could 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 the reason for it being there.
As for those who get hangry, Swami said greater awareness of the feeling itself could reduce the likelihood that hunger results in negative emotions and behaviours in individuals.
“Although our study doesn’t present ways to mitigate negative hunger-induced emotions, research suggests that being able to label an emotion can help people to regulate it, such as by recognising that we feel angry simply because we are hungry,” said Swami.
For palaeontologists this is better than striking gold: miners working to excavate permafrost in the Yukon in northwestern Canada have unearthed a frozen baby mammoth. Geologists from the Yukon Geological Survey and the University of Calgary say the animal, which has been named Nun cho ga – ‘big baby animal’ in the language of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, the First Nations people who live in the
region – is female and more than 30,000 years old.
Many Ice Age fossils have been found in the Yukon, but mummified remains with intact skin and hair, as seen on Nun cho ga, are very rare. In fact, she is the best-preserved woolly mammoth ever found in North America. She was discovered by miners working in the Klondike gold fields on Canada’s northwest coast, an area that played a key role in the gold rush of the 1890s.
“It has been one of my lifelong dreams to come face-to-face with a real woolly mammoth. That dream came true today,” said Yukon government palaeontologist Dr Grant Zazula. “Nun cho ga is beautiful, and one of the most incredible mummified Ice Age animals ever discovered in the world. I am excited to get to know her more.”
Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in elders and the government will now work together to preserve and study Nun cho ga.
“This is a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on moving forward with these remains in a way that honours our traditions, culture and laws,” said Chief Roberta Joseph. “We are thankful for the elders who have guided us so far and the name they provided. We are committed to respectfully handling Nun cho ga as she has chosen now to reveal herself to all of us.”