Have you ever heard the term ‘hangry’, to describe that feeling of being angry when you get hungry. Up to now this was a slang term put forward by observations of ourselves, but now it seems there is some science to support the concept of being hangry.

To put quite simply, researchers in America found that people were more angry at their partners when their blood glucose levels were low, indicating that they were hungry. This was quite some anger too, hungry people blasted their partners with loud music and stabbed more pins in to a voodoo doll representing their partner, compared to the couples who weren’t so hungry.

The authors put this down to our lack of self-control when we are hungry, because self-control requires energy which we derive from glucose. But worringly it seems that something as negligible as being hungry could be causing hundreds of marital arguments and even some cases of domestic violence, due to lack of energy for self-control.

This led the authors to a simple conclusion, that marital couples should eat regularly, especially if they plan on having a difficult conversation, because being sorry for what you said when you were hangry is no excuse.

Faye Prior (Researcher)

Source

Bushman, B., DeWall, C., Pond, R., & Hanus, M. (2014). Low glucose relates to greater aggression in married couples. PNAS, Publish ahead of print April 14^th, doi:10.1073/pnas.1400619111.

Images: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/hangryspouse.htm