Being “Hangry” Really Is A Thing

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So, scientists have now proven that being “hangry” is real thing. What took them so long?

Well, first of all things which seem intuitively right such as the weather making pain worse have actually been shown to have no correlation. So, things which seem obvious sometimes aren’t true. Secondly there has been plenty pf research into mood and various factors but little done with being hungry and angry in the real world “in the wild” so to speak.

This is measuring this when people go about their normal lives – obviously many other factors contribute to anger and irritability other than hunger.

In these sorts of situations groups of volunteers are monitored with an app and they are prompted randomly to provide answers to questions on their current mood and level of hunger. In this experiment, led by Viren Swami of Anglia Ruskin University, 64 adults were tracked over 21 days with five check-ins per day.

What did they find?

Yes, there was a strong correlation between hunger and anger and irritability. Specifically, 37% of the variance in irritability, 34% of the variance in anger, and 38% of the variance in pleasure was put down to hunger. Interestingly the negative emotions were impacted strongly by day-to-day hunger but also seemingly by residual levels of hunger over the research period.

So, there you have it, for the first time we now know that being “hangry” is a real thing in the real world. Proven●

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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Reference

Viren Swami, Samantha Hochstöger, Erik Kargl, Stefan Stieger.
Hangry in the field: An experience sampling study on the impact of hunger on anger, irritability, and affect.
PLOS ONE, 2022; 17 (7): e0269629
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269629

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