There’s a scientific reason why we get hangry, and it makes sense

You know that feeling, right?

You've been working all day, and you are absolutely STARVED... so hungry that you're actually on the verge of losing it. We've all been there, and as soon as we get a bit of munch into us, we kind of feel bad for being so angry. Hangry happens though, ladies, and science is now backing it up. According to Jennifer MacCormack, lead author of a new study about hunger, hanger is a real thing. “It’s generally accepted that hunger can impact our moods and even behaviours like aggression and impulsivity,” she said in an article published on Monday in the journal Emotion. And while they can confidently say that anger is a real reaction to hunger, they're still figuring out exactly why.

“But we still don’t know much about the psychological mechanisms that transform hunger into feeling hangry.”

Jennifer and her colleagues conducted a number of experiments to get to the bottom of hanger. The studies found that when you are under any sort of stress, you can instantly go from hunger to hanger. “Despite the colloquial term ‘hanger,’ we found that this effect was not specific to anger,” said Jennifer's co-author Kristen Lindquist.

“People in our studies were more likely to feel intense negativity in general when they were hungry and something bad happened—suggesting that feeling hungry can turn up the dial on lots of negative emotions such as anger, stress or disgust.”

But what is the actual importance of this research? Well, according to the lovely Jennifer this may lead to "changes in hunger physiology—whether due to old age, chronic dieting, diabetes or eating disorders— which could impact downstream emotions and cognitions in these populations.” There you have it now. Anyone else starving all of a sudden?