Behind The Hangeries

You’ve most likely heard of — or experienced — the hangeries, or irritable behavior attributed to hunger. The feeling is all too real to those who experience it, but researchers know little about the mechanisms that trigger these food swings.

Jennifer MacCormack, a doctorial candidate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, decided to investigate the phenomenon. So, she designed an experiment intended to annoy hungry people.

The study consisted of 118 undergraduate students; half had eaten, half had fasted. The students were broken into groups and given tests. Some wrote about their emotions. Other tests included a “long, arduous computer exercise” designed to crash just as the participant was finishing. The crash was blamed on the student.

Questionnaires were then given to each participant. Reponses showed “all the students were made a little upset by the experiment, but only the hungry students who hadn't written about their emotions were especially angry,” explained MacCormack. They felt more judgment, and hate, she added.

Findings, which were published in the journal Emotion, showed that hunger alone isn’t to blame for food swings. Rather, negative stimuli and lack of awareness about one's own emotions cause an already hungry person to get hangry.

Results also hint that feelings may regulate the human body more than previously thought. Other physical states — like feeling hot or cold — can have a similar (hanger-like) response.