Chapter 14: When Feelings, Hunger and Tiredness Decide

The Message at Eleven at Night

Femi is forty-four and coordinates volunteers at a large community centre. It has been a difficult day. In the morning, two volunteers did not turn up. At lunchtime, a heating pipe leaked in the hall. In the afternoon, a parent complained loudly about a cancelled class. Femi skipped lunch, stayed late to clean up the water and came home at nine, exhausted and hungry.

At eleven at night, lying in bed with his phone, he sees an email from a member of the centre's committee. It asks, politely but firmly, why the class was cancelled and suggests that the volunteers need better organization. Femi feels a hot rush of anger. After everything he did today, this is what he gets. He sits up and writes a long, sharp reply, pointing out every way in which the committee has failed to support him. He reads it once, feels a grim satisfaction and presses "send".

In the morning, after a night of poor sleep and a proper breakfast, Femi reads his message again. His stomach sinks. Some of his points were fair, but the tone was angry and unkind, and he wrote things that he does not really believe. The committee member had only asked a reasonable question. Femi spends the next two days apologizing and repairing the relationship.

The Femi who wrote the message and the Femi who read it the next morning were the same person, with the same values and the same knowledge. What was different was his state: hungry, exhausted and angry at night; rested, fed and calm in the morning. This chapter is about how our bodily and emotional states shape our decisions, often without our noticing, and about the evidence on this topic, some of which is strong and some of which turned out to be weaker than first claimed.

Hot States and Cold States

Researchers sometimes describe two kinds of states that we can be in when we make decisions. A hot state is a state of strong feeling or need: hunger, thirst, tiredness, pain, anger, fear, excitement, desire or craving. A cold state is a calm state, in which no strong feeling or need is pulling at us.

In hot states, our priorities shift. What we want right now becomes much more important, and what we will want later fades into the background. A hungry person thinks about food. An angry person thinks about the wrong that was done to them. A frightened person thinks about escape. These shifts make sense. Hot states evolved to help us deal with urgent needs and threats. But they can lead us to make choices that we would not make, and may regret, once the state has passed.

One of the most interesting findings in this area is that we are poor at predicting how hot states will change us. In a cold state, it is hard to imagine how strongly hunger, anger or temptation will pull on us later. And in a hot state, it is hard to remember how we will feel once we are calm again. This difficulty is called the empathy gap: a gap between our understanding of our own hot and cold selves.

The empathy gap explains many common mistakes. A person on a diet may plan, in a cold state after a good meal, to resist dessert at a party, without realizing how much harder it will be when the dessert is in front of them and everyone else is eating. A person who has never been very tired may promise to drive home late after a long event, not realizing how tired they will be. And a person in the grip of anger, like Femi, may write a message without any sense of how it will look the next morning.

The empathy gap also affects how we judge other people. When we are calm and well fed, it is easy to criticize someone who made a poor choice while exhausted, frightened or in pain. "I would never have done that," we think. But we are judging from a cold state, and we may be underestimating how differently we would act in their hot one. Remembering the empathy gap can make us a little more patient with others, and also with our own past selves.

Hunger, Shopping and Projection

A common example of hot states in daily life is food shopping. Many people have noticed that they buy more, and buy different things, when they shop hungry. Some studies have found that hungry shoppers tend to buy more food, and more high-calorie food, than shoppers who have recently eaten, and a few studies have suggested that hunger may even increase interest in buying things that are not food. The size of these effects varies, and not every study finds them, but the general pattern matches the experience of many people.

A related idea is called projection bias. This is the tendency to assume that our future preferences will be like our current ones. When we are hungry, we imagine that we will want a lot of food later, so we buy a lot. When we are warm and comfortable, we underestimate how much we will want a warm coat in winter. When we are excited about a new hobby, we imagine that we will feel this excited for years, and buy expensive equipment to match.

Projection bias is a form of the empathy gap stretched forward in time. Our present state colours our picture of the future. This is one reason why it is wise to make plans and purchases for the future at a time when our state is close to how we expect to feel then, or at least to notice when it is not.

The simplest response to all of this is also one of the oldest pieces of household wisdom: do not shop when you are hungry, and take a list. A list made at home, in a calm state, protects you from the choices of your hungry self in the shop. It is a small but clear example of planning in a cold state for a hot moment.

Stress is another state that changes how we decide. Under acute stress, such as just before an important test, during an argument or while rushing to catch a train, people seem to rely more on habits and familiar routines and less on careful thinking about new options. This can be helpful when the habits are good, which is one reason why people who work in emergencies practise their routines so thoroughly. It can be unhelpful when a new situation calls for a new response. Knowing this, it makes sense to prepare for stressful moments in advance, so that the habit you fall back on is the one you would choose.

How Emotions Change What We Choose

Emotions are not just pleasant or unpleasant feelings. They also change how we see the world, and therefore how we decide.

Fear tends to make risks seem larger and more likely. A frightened person may avoid a sensible opportunity because the possible dangers loom so large. Some studies suggest that anger works differently: angry people may feel more certain, more in control and more willing to take risks, and they may be quicker to blame others. Sadness may make people more willing to accept change, perhaps because the present seems less worth keeping. These findings come from many experiments, and the details are still being studied, but the general idea is well accepted: different emotions push our judgments in different directions.

An important point is that emotions often carry over from one situation to another. Femi's anger came from a long, difficult day, not from the committee member's email. But the anger was still present when he read the email, and it shaped his reply. Psychologists sometimes call this kind of feeling an incidental emotion: an emotion that arises from one thing and then affects a decision about something else. Incidental emotions are especially tricky because we usually do not notice them. We think we are reacting to the email, when we are partly reacting to the day.

It would be wrong to conclude that emotions are simply a problem for good decisions. Emotions carry valuable information. The uneasy feeling you have about a deal that seems too good to be true, the warmth you feel toward a place that seems right for you, the discomfort you feel when asked to do something unfair, all of these can be wise guides. Studies of people whose emotional responses have been affected by certain kinds of brain injury suggest that they can find it very hard to make even simple everyday decisions, even when their reasoning is otherwise intact. Feelings seem to help us weigh what matters.

So the aim is not to remove emotion from decisions. It is to notice which emotions are present, ask where they come from and decide whether they are telling us something about this choice or simply spilling over from somewhere else.

A practical way to do this is to ask, "Would I feel the same about this choice tomorrow morning, after a good night's sleep and a good breakfast?" If you are fairly sure the answer is yes, your feeling is probably about the choice itself. If you suspect the answer is no, your state may be doing more of the deciding than you would like.

Is Willpower a Tank That Runs Empty?

For a number of years, a popular idea held that self-control works like fuel in a tank. Each time you resist a temptation or make a hard decision, the idea went, you use up some of the fuel, and after a while the tank runs low and your self-control fails. This idea, often called ego depletion, was supported by many early studies, and it spread widely in books and advice. A related phrase, decision fatigue, described the idea that making many decisions in a row wears down the quality of later decisions.

When researchers organized large, careful attempts to repeat key ego depletion studies, with many laboratories following the same method, they found little or no effect. Other analyses suggested that the original body of research may have looked stronger than it really was, partly because studies with striking results were more likely to be published. Today, many researchers are doubtful that self-control is a simple resource that runs out in the way the original idea suggested, though the debate continues, and some argue that weaker or different versions of the effect may exist.

A famous study that seemed to show decision fatigue in real life has also been questioned. It reported that the decisions of officials who reviewed requests became less favourable as time passed since their last meal break, and more favourable again after the break. Later researchers pointed out other possible explanations, such as the order in which different kinds of cases were scheduled, and the study is no longer treated as strong evidence on its own.

What, then, remains? Some things are well established. Tiredness and lack of sleep clearly affect attention, mood and judgment. People who are short of sleep tend to be more irritable, less careful and slower to notice mistakes. Long periods of demanding work without rest can lower the quality of almost any task. And people often feel that their self-control is weaker when they are tired, stressed or unwell, even if the precise "fuel tank" explanation is not correct. So the practical advice to make important decisions when you are rested still makes sense. It simply rests on firmer ground than the idea of a willpower tank.

Three Lives and Their States

Noor is thirty-nine and does the family's weekly shopping on her way home from work. She often arrives at the supermarket tired and hungry, and she often comes home with snacks, ready meals and items she did not plan to buy, while forgetting some things she actually needed. She tries a simple change. She makes a shopping list at home on Sunday evening, after dinner, when she is calm. She also keeps a piece of fruit in her bag to eat before she goes into the shop. Within a few weeks, her shopping costs less, her family eats more of the meals she planned and she spends less time in the shop.

Teodor is seventy-six. His wife died four months ago, after nearly fifty years of marriage. Since then, several people have advised him to sell their large house and move somewhere smaller, and one relative has urged him to decide quickly. Teodor feels lost and very tired, and part of him wants to agree to anything so that the pressure will stop. His doctor, during a routine visit, gently mentions something that many grief guides also suggest: when possible, it is often wise to avoid making large, hard-to-reverse decisions in the first months after a major loss, while grief is so strong. Teodor tells his family that he will not decide anything about the house for at least a year, unless something urgent happens. The relief is immediate. A year later, he decides to stay for now and to rent out a room to a student, which brings him company.

Kalani is sixteen. After an argument with her parents about her curfew, she is furious. She types a message to her friends saying that she is going to leave home and never come back, and she starts packing a bag. Then her older brother knocks on the door, sits on the bed and simply says, "You are really angry. Let us go for a walk first." They walk around the block twice. By the second round, Kalani's anger has cooled enough for her to see that she wants a later curfew, not a new life. The next day, she and her parents have a calmer conversation and agree on a compromise.

In each case, the person's state was pulling strongly toward a choice they might regret. Noor's hunger, Teodor's grief and Kalani's anger were all real and understandable. What helped was not ignoring these feelings, but finding a way to let the hot state pass, or to plan around it, before making the choice.

The Pause

The most powerful tool for decisions in hot states is simple: the pause. A pause is any gap between the feeling and the action. It can be ten seconds or ten months, depending on the size of the decision and the strength of the feeling.

For small, quick reactions, a short pause is often enough. Taking a slow breath before answering a sharp remark, counting to ten before replying to a provoking message or stepping away from a heated conversation for a few minutes can stop many words that would later be regretted.

For messages written in anger, a longer pause helps. Many people use a simple rule: write the message if you need to, because writing can be a relief, but do not send it until the next day. In the morning, read it again. Often you will want to change it, or not send it at all. Femi now follows this rule, and it has saved him from several difficult apologies.

For large decisions, such as moving, leaving a job, ending a relationship or making a big purchase, a still longer pause may be wise when you are in a strong emotional state. This does not mean ignoring your feelings. Strong feelings can be telling you something important. But giving the decision time allows you to see whether the feeling lasts, and to make the choice in a calmer state where both your heart and your head can take part.

Some situations do require quick action, and a pause would be harmful. If you or someone else is in danger, act quickly and contact emergency services. The pause is for choices that can wait, which, when we look carefully, are most of them.

Practical Steps

First, check your basic state before important decisions. Ask yourself four simple questions: Am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I angry or upset? Am I feeling lonely or cut off from others? If the answer to any of them is yes, consider whether the decision can wait until that need is met.

Second, name the feeling. When you notice a strong feeling, put it into words, at least silently: "I am angry," "I am frightened," "I am very excited." Naming a feeling often reduces its grip a little, and it reminds you that the feeling is a state, not the whole truth.

Third, ask where the feeling came from. Is it about this decision, or is it left over from something else, such as a hard day, a poor night or an earlier argument? If it comes from somewhere else, try to set it aside before deciding.

Fourth, plan in a cold state for hot moments. At a calm time, decide how you will handle the situations where you tend to make hot decisions. Make a shopping list after eating. Decide in advance not to reply to work messages after a certain hour. Agree with yourself that you will not make major purchases on the same day you first see them.

Fifth, write but wait. When you feel a strong urge to send a message, make a complaint or announce a decision, write it down first, then wait until you have slept and eaten. Then decide.

Sixth, protect your sleep and your meals around big decisions. If you have an important choice coming, try to sleep well the night before, eat properly and leave yourself time. This is one of the simplest and most reliable ways to improve the quality of your decisions.

A Short Exercise: The State Diary

This exercise helps you discover how your own states affect your choices. It takes a few minutes each day for two weeks.

Each evening, write down two or three choices you made that day that you feel unsure about or that you later regretted, even slightly. They can be small: something you bought, something you said, something you ate, a message you sent or a task you avoided. Next to each choice, write down the state you were in when you made it. Were you hungry, tired, rushed, angry, worried, lonely, excited or calm? Write a word or two for each.

Also write down one or two choices from the day that you feel good about, and note your state for those too.

At the end of two weeks, read through your diary. Look for patterns. Do your regretted choices cluster around certain states, such as tiredness in the evening or hunger before lunch? Do your best choices tend to happen at certain times of day? Many people find clear patterns. One person discovers that almost all their unplanned purchases happen late at night on their phone. Another finds that their sharpest words come after skipped meals. Another notices that their best decisions are made on morning walks.

Once you have found a pattern, design one small change to protect yourself. If late-night phone purchases are the problem, you might move the phone out of the bedroom. If sharp words follow skipped meals, you might keep a snack in your bag. If your best thinking happens on walks, you might save important decisions for your next walk. Try the change for two weeks and see whether it helps.

This exercise is not about blaming yourself for being human. Everyone is affected by their state. It is about learning your own weather, so that you can carry an umbrella on the days when you need one.

Questions People Often Ask

"Should I make decisions only when I feel completely calm?" That would be impossible, because many important decisions arrive when we are not calm. The aim is not perfect calm, but awareness. If you know you are tired, upset or excited, you can give yourself a little more time, ask someone you trust for their view or make a smaller, reversible decision now and a larger one later.

"If ego depletion is doubtful, does that mean willpower does not matter?" Not exactly. People clearly differ in how well they manage temptations, and self-control is related to many things people care about. What is doubtful is the specific idea that willpower is a limited fuel that is used up by each act of self-control. Many researchers now think that motivation, habits, beliefs about one's own self-control and the design of one's surroundings play a larger role. For practical purposes, this is encouraging. It suggests that arranging your environment and building good habits may help more than trying to save up willpower.

"What if my feelings are so strong that I cannot pause?" Sometimes feelings can become overwhelming, and it may be very hard to step back from them. If you often feel this way, or if strong emotions are making daily life very difficult, please talk with someone you trust and consider speaking with a doctor or another qualified professional. Support is available, and asking for it is a sign of good sense. If you ever feel that you might harm yourself or someone else, contact your local emergency services or a crisis helpline immediately.

Chapter Summary

We make decisions in different states. In hot states, such as hunger, tiredness, anger, fear or excitement, our priorities shift toward what we want right now. We are poor at predicting how hot states will change us, a difficulty called the empathy gap, and we tend to assume that our future preferences will match our present ones, which is called projection bias.

Different emotions push judgments in different directions, and incidental emotions from one situation can spill into decisions about another. Emotions also carry useful information. The popular idea that willpower is a fuel tank that runs empty has largely failed careful replication, and a famous real-world example has been questioned, but tiredness and lack of sleep clearly affect judgment.

Checking your basic state, naming feelings, asking where they come from, planning in a cold state for hot moments, writing but waiting and protecting sleep and meals around big choices give your calm self a fair say. In the final chapter, we bring together the tools of this book into a simple approach for designing better choices in your own life.