Some people are crummy when they haven’t had their morning cup of coffee, and others tend to get a little cranky as it edges towards lunch.

Then there are those who are just generally shitty, but we won’t go down that route.

In the past, psychologists traditionally thought of hunger and emotions as separate from one another, but these days an increasing amount of scientific evidence suggests that your physical states can actually shape your emotions and cognition.

Psychologists Kristen Lindquist and Jennifer MacCormack dug deep during their study, published on the Conversation in great length, so we’ll do our bit to keep it brief.

Can’t have you missing out on lunch and ruining the office vibe:

An idea in psychology known as affect-as-information theory holds that your mood can temporarily shape how you see the world. In this way, when you’re hungry, you may view things in a more negative light than when you’re not hungry. But here’s the twist.

People are most likely to be guided by their feelings when they’re not paying attention to them. This suggests that people may become hangry when they aren’t actively focused on their internal feelings, but instead wrapped up in the world around them, such as that terrible driver or that customer’s rude comment.

Forget to eat at your peril.

They ran a number of test studies using pictures, aimed at checking how hungry people reacted compared to those who had eaten, and I’ll condense their findings as follows:

Hungry people who saw negative images thought the pictographs meant something more unpleasant. However, hungry people’s ratings after positive or neutral emotional pictures were no different than the not-hungry people.

This suggests that the hangry bias doesn’t occur when people experience positive or even neutral situations. Instead, hunger only becomes relevant when people confront negative stimuli or situations…

Hunger likely only becomes relevant in negative situations because hunger itself produces unpleasant feelings – making it easier to mistake the cause of those feelings to be the negative things around you, rather than your hunger.

I can dig a snarling dog as negative, and some cats as positive, but why is an iron neutral?

In short, being hungry makes negative or emotional feelings worse, but shouldn’t stop you enjoying positive vibes that come your way.

Unless you’re the shitty person we mentioned earlier. Dick.

The number one factor in fighting hunger, per the study:

Most importantly, your awareness can make all the difference. Yes, maybe you’re hungry and starting to feel road rage, overwhelmed with your task deadline, or wounded by your partner’s words. But amid the heat of those feelings, if you can, step back for a moment and notice your growling stomach. This could help you recognize [sic] that hunger is part of why you feel particularly upset. This awareness then gives you the power to still be you, even when you’re hungry.

Grub’s up.

[source:conversation]