It’s not wise to shop for food when you are hungry However recently I was told that it is not advisable to make any decision while you are being hungry. What’s the reason? Does hunger affect decisions for real?
This is a reference to the findings of a research study by the University in Scotland which examined the effect and impact of hunger on choices that aren’t related to purchasing food. The latest research found that hunger had a significant impact on decisions, causing people to become impatient, and to accept lower rewards that they would have in the absence of hunger. The researchers tested 50 study participants twice, once after they ate normally, and another time on a day they didn’t eat any food at all. The study team found that if you give individuals a reward today, or double it in the future, they generally are willing to sit for 35 days to get more than double the reward, except when they’re hungry. The subjects who were hungry were willing to wait just three days. The study also found that, for three distinct kinds of rewards, those who were hungry preferred smaller, hypothetical rewards that could be obtained right away, rather than more substantial rewards that were later.
Researcher Benjamin T. Vincent, a psychologist, claimed that the findings suggest that the reluctance to delay the pleasure of being hungry could affect financial or other crucial choices. When you are planning to talk to a mortgage or pension advisor while you are hungry, it may cause you to care slightly more about immediate satisfaction in the face of an upcoming brighter future, he explained and said it’s essential to recognize that hunger can influence your choices in ways you don’t think of. The researcher Dr. Vincent added that the research findings are part of an overall effort in the fields of psychology and behavioral economics to understand the influences on the way people make decisions and could empower them by helping them anticipate and limit the impact of hunger, which could influence their decisions away from their longer-term goals. Furthermore, he stated that the findings reveal the human nature of our behavior that could be used by marketers, a further reason we need to know that our preferences can alter when we’re hungry. The results add to the findings of a well-known psychological study in which kids were offered a single marshmallow at once or two if willing to wait for fifteen minutes. The children who chose one marshmallow right away were regarded as being more impulsive than those who chose to hold off until they could enjoy two. We all know that it’s not recommended to buy food when you’re hungry. This isn’t simply common wisdom. It was proven by an experiment that found that those who didn’t eat all afternoon eat more calories than people who had snacks prior to that. In the same study, it was revealed that in real-world supermarkets, shoppers bought more high-calorie items than those with lower calories as dinner time approached, compared to earlier in the daytime. What do you think, Does hunger affect decisions?