Why do some people get 'hangry' more quickly than others?

[erronis]

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-people-hangry-quickly.html

However old we are, we all have a tendency to grow irritated if our body lacks enough fuel. But while humans have experienced this for as long as we have been on the planet, a specific word to describe the phenomenon only entered the Oxford English dictionary in 2018. "Hangry: to be bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger."

A Pallas's cat (also known as a manul) gets increasingly hangry as it hunts for food. Credit: BBC

Perhaps more surprising is the scarcity of research into how hunger affects people's everyday moods. Most studies on food and mood have focused on patients with metabolic or eating disorders--perhaps because many psychologists have traditionally understood hunger to be such a basic physiological process.

So, with colleagues from the fields of psychology and mental health, I decided to investigate how different people respond to feeling hungry. We wanted to see if (and why) some people are better at reacting calmly when hunger strikes. Perhaps there would be some lessons for those of us with young children, too.

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