WHY WE CAN PASS FROM A SIMPLE HUNGER TO THE SENSATION OF BEING AFFAMED AND AGGRESSIVE?

Being hungry has certain consequences on our behavior. Everyone has had the opportunity to see it. When hunger is conceptualized as emotion, it can lead to anger, and seen as the result of hypoglycemia. But the origin of this behavior is more complicated than a drop in blood sugar, according to a study published on June 11, 2018 in the journal Emotion.

FROM HUNGER TO ANGER

What makes someone go from simple hunger to anger? More than just a drop of blood sugar, this combination of hunger and anger can be a complex emotional response involving a game of biology, personality and environmental cues.

We all know that hunger can sometimes affect our emotions and the perception of the world around us. The purpose of the research published in the scientific journal Emotion is now to better understand the psychological mechanisms of emotional states induced by hunger, especially when someone goes from hunger to anger or aggression.

CONTEXT AND CONSCIOUSNESS

When someone is hungry, there are two key things that determine whether this hunger will contribute to negative emotions or not: context and self-awareness.

Strangely, sometimes we are not just hungry and we start attacking the entire universe. We were all hungry, and recognized the inconvenience caused, and we had a sandwich or a snack that at once allows us to feel better and to be relieved. We feel angry when we experience discomfort due to hunger, but we interpret these feelings as strong emotions to other people or situations.

To carry out this study, researchers first conducted two online experiments involving more than 400 people. According to experience, the participants showed an image designed to induce positive, neutral or negative feelings. They then showed an ambiguous image, a Chinese pictogram, and asked to rate the pictogram on a seven-point scale, ranging from pleasant to unpleasant. Participants were also asked to report how hungry they were.

The researchers found that the hungry participants were more likely to call the Chinese pictograms negative, but only after being primed with a negative image. There was no effect for neutral or positive images.

The idea here is that negative images provided a context for people to interpret their feelings of hunger in the sense that the pictograms were unpleasant. So there seems to be something special about unpleasant situations, rather than pleasant or neutral situations.

The study says it's not just environmental cues that can affect whether someone is hungry or angry. The level of emotional awareness of people matters too. People who are more aware of the manifestation of their hunger as an emotion are less likely to become aggressive and angry.

YOU AREN'T YOU WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY?

In a laboratory experiment involving more than 200 university students, researchers asked participants to fast or eat in advance. After some of the students were invited to complete a writing exercise designed to direct their attention to their emotions, all participants were invited to participate in a scenario designed to evoke negative emotions.

Students were asked to complete a tedious exercise on a computer that, unbeknownst to them, was programmed to crash just before it could be completed. One of the researchers then entered the room and blamed the student for the computer crash.

Participants were then asked to complete questionnaires about their emotions and their perception of the quality of the experience. The researchers found that hungry people reported larger unpleasant emotions such as feeling stressed and hateful when they were not explicitly focused on their own emotions. These people also thought that the researcher conducting the experiment was more critical or harsh. Participants who spent time thinking about their emotions, even when they were hungry, did not report these changes in emotions or social perceptions.

Researchers' data suggests that by simply being aware of the situation (your hunger) and recognizing what you feel (your emotions), we can remain self, even when hunger is booming.

Finally, this research focuses on the mind-body connection. Our bodies play an important role in shaping our experiences, perceptions and instant behaviors, whether we are hungry, tired or rested, sick or healthy. This means that it is important to take care of our bodies, to pay attention to these bodily signals and not to neglect them, because they are not only important for our long-term mental health, but also for the quality of our body. daily psychological state, our social relations and our performance at work.

EXTERNAL SOURCES

"Feeling hangry? When hunger is conceptualized as emotion. Emotion, 2018; http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/06/hungry.aspx, DOI: 10.1037 / emo0000422

"When does hungry become hangry?", Http://www.philly.com/philly/health/when-does-hungry-become-hangry-20180612.html

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