New Study Finds Being ‘Hangry’ Is A Real Thing

There is a difference between being hungry and being hangry. I think that most of us have probably experienced both, but there are some people who seem to be hangry the moment that hunger strikes.

Although we all have that one friend that experiences hanger every time we are with them, there have been plenty of people who have doubted its real existence.

They don’t have to doubt it any longer, thanks to a study that has been published in Plos One.

The study makes the bold declaration that “being hangry is real.”

It seems as if this was a personal interest project because the lead author of the study’s wife said that he behaved that way but he didn’t believe it. After Viren Swami looked into it further, he indeed found that it was all too real.

Swami has every right to look into this possibility because, according to USA Today, he is a psychology professor at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK.

He said: “I have an interest in the effects of hunger and eating on our well-being and behaviors, so this seemed like a natural extension, especially as there has been very little research on the topic.”

In order to make the determination, they looked to central Europe and selected 64 participants who were over the age of 18 but under the age of 60. They wanted to record the levels of hunger, irritability, anger, and pleasure, five times every day for 21 days.

The participants in the study had to make their own recordings of how they were feeling using a smartphone app. According to Medical News Today, Swami said that self-reports of hunger were important for the context of the emotions they were feeling.

He went on to say: “Because self-reported hunger likely depends on an awareness of hunger cues, it can perhaps be assumed that it reflects the extent to which physiological effects of hunger have translated into awareness and attributional processes.”

According to the research, when a person is hungrier, they are more likely to feel anger and irritability, and a lower level of pleasure. They ruled out a number of factors that can also affect it, including age, sex, diet, and body mass index.

A 37% change in irritability and 34% change in anger were associated with hunger, according to the study.

Although this study does seem to indicate that being hangry is a real thing, they still don’t know what causes it. Some people feel that it is due to low blood sugar but more research will need to be done to confirm that.