Mad at Your Partner? You Should Probably Eat Something.
LatestDo you fuss at your spouse a lot? You’re probably just hungry, or rather hangry, that deft combination of hunger and angry mania. A new study found that marital drama is often at its highest when all parties should’ve just had something to eat.
According to USA Today, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asked 107 couples to check their blood sugar each night, then prick a voodoo doll with 1-51 pins to communicate how upset they were with their partner. Neither partner could see the other’s doll.
After three weeks of stabbing toys, the couples were brought into a lab and sat in separate rooms. There they were “told to compete against each other to see who could press a computer button faster after a given command. The winner could blast the loser with a loud, ugly sound.”
The partners who pricked their voodoo doll more often were more inclined to buzz the hell out of their partner, like Taboo at a dinner party but even more annoying. It didn’t matter whether the couples had described their marriages are weak or strong.
Lead researcher Brad Bushman of Ohio State University — who says if you’re discussing a sensitive topic with your boo, you should break the crappy news over food — said that angry people are more unpredictable and prone to exacting their anger on their partners, verbally and physically. Bushman also noted that anger is the “leading cause of homocide.”
On the other hand, Ann Goebel-Fabbri, a psychologist with Boston’s Joslin Diabetes Institute, thinks Bushman is taking his voodoo doll findings a bit too far. She says those diagnosed with diabetes are prone to big swings in glucose levels and mood swings but that doesn’t mean they are more prone to violence.
“I think the translation from voodoo doll and loud noise to domestic violence, I think is way overstating it,” she said. “It would be lovely if we could solve the domestic violence problem by feeding people better, but…there’s no data that would support that.”
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