Never make decisions when you are hungry! Here’s why →

People have to make countless decisions every day: what time to get up in the morning, what to eat for lunch, whether to pay the deposit for Double 11... The decisions are big and small, some are insignificant, and some may directly change our lives.

It is difficult to find a unified answer to the question of how to make wise decisions. However, scientists have put forward a simple and practical suggestion on how to avoid making unwise decisions: Don't make decisions when you are hungry, especially those important decisions. You must think clearly after you are full . The reason is that when people are hungry, they often focus more on immediate benefits and ignore long-term gains. As a result, looking back a few years later, it is often found that the choice made when hungry is likely to be the worse one .

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Strictly speaking, this research is not new. Scientists have long discovered that if people go to the store when they are hungry, they are likely to buy a large basket of high-calorie junk food. Even though they have too much to eat, they just can't stop.

However, the old study only focused on the small scenario of " shopping on an empty stomach ". In the latest new study, scientists expanded the scope and invited 50 subjects (28 women, 22 men, average age 21.7 years old), divided them into a satiety group (ate a full meal 2 hours before the test) and a hunger group (fasted 10 hours in advance), and then announced to the two groups in the test: Now there is a reward that can be given to them immediately, but if they are willing to wait, the reward has a chance to double. Scientists asked the two groups of people how many days they were willing to wait for the good thing of "double the reward".

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As a result, the two groups gave their own answers for the three different rewards :

If the food reward was 10 chocolate bars, the satiated group could wait 35 days, while the hungry group could only wait 3 days.

For a monetary reward of £20, the well-fed group could wait 90 days, while the hungry group could only wait 40 days.

If the music reward is 20 song downloads, the satiety group can wait 40 days, while the hunger group can only wait 12 days.

Results showed that hunger had the strongest effect on food rewards, but also had significant effects on other rewards .

Regardless of the reward, the satiated group showed better patience, persistence, and restraint - these are all virtues that people think successful people must have. Psychological research has long found that the ability to choose " delayed gratification " is important for a person's success. Only by resisting the temptation of the moment can you get long-term rewards. The famous marshmallow experiment is that children need to resist eating the marshmallow in front of them in order to get two marshmallows after 15 minutes - children who can do this often develop better later. However, the latest study shows that whether a person can show these virtues is not determined by who he is, but by whether he is hungry .

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Taking this a step further, this study actually tells us that people who are starving may make a series of decisions that are detrimental to their future development . When an adult makes financial decisions on an empty stomach, he is more likely to only care about the present, rather than the distant poetry and retirement funds.

In fact, this may be one reason why it is so difficult for hungry poor people to escape the poverty trap on their own: they find it difficult to make good decisions because they are poor and hungry, and they become even poorer and hungrier because of a series of bad decisions.

Today, there aren't as many people starving as there used to be. However, if you're planning to fast for a long time to lose weight, you might want to think twice. At least eat a full meal before you make the final decision .

Author｜Gui Youyu

Review | Mao Lihua, Chairman of the Labor Union, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Peking University, Associate Professor

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