Tag: behaviour

Categories : General InterestTags :

Scientists Prove that People Really do Get ‘Hangry’

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels

A new study published in the journal PLOS ONE has discovered that feeling hungry really can make us ‘hangry’, with emotions such as anger and irritability strongly linked with hunger.

Hangry, a portmanteau of hungry and angry, is a commonly used colloquialism, but the phenomenon has not been widely explored by science outside of laboratory environments.

The study’s researchers found that hunger is associated with increased levels of anger and irritability, as well as reduced levels of pleasure.

The researchers recruited 64 adult participants, who recorded their levels of hunger and various measures of emotional wellbeing over a 21-day period using a smartphone app. They made their reports with the app five times a day, allowing data collection to take place in real-world settings such as at work or at home.

Hunger was found to be linked with stronger feelings of anger and irritability, as well as lower ratings of pleasure, and the effects were substantial, even after taking into account demographic factors such as age and sex, body mass index, dietary behaviour, and individual personality traits.

Hunger was associated with 37% of the variance in irritability, 34% of the variance in anger and 38% of the variance in pleasure recorded by the participants. The research also found that the negative emotions – irritability, anger, and unpleasantness – are caused by both day-to-day fluctuations in hunger, as well as residual levels of hunger measured by averages over the three-week period.

Lead author of the study Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said: “Many of us are aware that being hungry can influence our emotions, but surprisingly little scientific research has focused on being ‘hangry’.

“Ours is the first study to examine being ‘hangry’ outside of a lab. By following people in their day-to-day lives, we found that hunger was related to levels of anger, irritability, and pleasure.

“Although our study doesn’t present ways to mitigate negative hunger-induced emotions, research suggests that being able to label an emotion can help people to regulate it, such as by recognising that we feel angry simply because we are hungry. Therefore, greater awareness of being ‘hangry’ could reduce the likelihood that hunger results in negative emotions and behaviours in individuals.”

The field work was carried out by Stefan Stieger, Professor of Psychology at Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences. Prof Stieger said: “This ‘hangry’ effect hasn’t been analysed in detail, so we chose a field-based approach where participants were invited to respond to prompts to complete brief surveys on an app. They were sent these prompts five times a day at semi-random occasions over a three-week period.

“This allowed us to generate intensive longitudinal data in a manner not possible with traditional laboratory-based research. Although this approach requires a great deal of effort – not only for participants but also for researchers in designing such studies – the results provide a high degree of generalisability compared to laboratory studies, giving us a much more complete picture of how people experience the emotional outcomes of hunger in their everyday lives.”

Source: Anglia Ruskin University

Categories : PaediatricsTags :

Older Siblings Confer Healthy Development

On By ModernMedia
Children
Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

Being a younger sibling in a family can have more benefits than simply being spoiled by the parents. A new study, published in BMC Public Health, reveals that older siblings confer a protective effect on the behaviours of their younger brothers and sisters.

Exposure environmental stressors during critical periods of life, especially to maternal stress while in the womb, can have negative long-term consequences for children’s development.

In a new study, researchers used longitudinal data from the LINA cohort (Lifestyle and environmental factors and their Influence on the Newborn Allergy risk) to test 373 German mother-child pairs, from pregnancy until 10 years of age. 

Mothers were asked to fill in three validated questionnaires, to assess their stress levels and their child’s behavioural problems. First, the researchers assessed which social and environmental factors were linked to an increase in maternal stress levels during pregnancy, and the long-term consequences of maternal stress on the occurrence of child behavioural problems. Second, the researchers assessed whether the presence of siblings had a positive effect on the occurrence of child behavioural problems, by directly reducing stress levels and increasing children’s psychological well-being, or by indirectly buffering the negative consequences of maternal stress. 

Prenatal stress can cause behavioural problems in the child

The results of the study showed that socio-environmental stressors, like the lack of sufficient social areas in the neighbourhood, were clearly linked to an increase in maternal stress levels during pregnancy. Moreover, mothers who had experienced high stress levels, like worries, loss of joy or tension, during pregnancy were also more likely to report the occurrence of behavioural problems when their children were 7, 8 or 10 years old. “These results confirm previous findings about the negative impact that even mild forms of prenatal stress might have on child behaviour, even after several years, and highlight the importance of early intervention policies that increase maternal wellbeing and reduce the risks of maternal stress already during pregnancy,” explained Federica Amici, one of the researchers involved in the project.

On a more positive note, the study also found a lower occurrence of behavioural problems in children with older siblings. “Children who have older brothers or sisters in their households are less likely to develop problems, which suggests that siblings are crucial to promote a healthy child development,” explained Gunda Herberth, coordinator of the LINA study. 

Higher social competence thanks to older siblings?

This study further suggests that the presence of older siblings directly reduced the risk of developing behavioural problems, but did not affect negative effects of maternal stress on child behaviour. How could older siblings reduce the occurrence of behavioural problems in children? By interacting with their older siblings, children may develop better emotional, perspective taking and problem solving skills, which are linked to higher social competence and emotion understanding. Moreover, the presence of older siblings may provide learning opportunities for parents, who might thus develop different expectations and better parental skills. 

“We were especially impressed by the important role that siblings appear to play for a healthy child development,” concluded researcher Anja Widdig. “We hope that our findings will draw attention to the importance of public health policies that directly target children and their siblings, and promote a healthy environment for their well-being and the development of high-quality sibling relationships”.

Source: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research