"You're not you when you're hungry..."

The Mars Company put together one of the most highly successful marketing campaigns in the last several years for its Snickers candy bar, called "You're not you when you're hungry."  There have been several commercials (here's one starring the famous actress, Betty White), many of which have gone on to win awards from the likes of the Cannes Lions and the Emmys.  As a matter of fact, in the first full year of the campaign, these commercials helped increased global sales of Snickers, an 80-year, billion-dollar brand, by an unprecedented 16%!  Not too shabby.  But just as important, the commercial has shed light on something that can affects all of us if we don't take care of ourselves.  It's called ego depletion and I have talked about it before in a previous post ("What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes...").


Basically, the idea goes something like this.  We all have to exercise self-control - some of us more than others at certain times in our lives.  Self-control is the ability to resist an urge, desire, or impulse to do something, frequently something that is not good for us (eating that second doughnut, getting angry and yelling at someone we love, or staying up to watch that television show on Netflix, even if we do have to get up early the next morning).  Under the vast majority of circumstances, we can resist our temptations or impulses.  Unfortunately, though, there are times when our so-called "self-control energy" is so drained that we can no longer fight off these urges.  We end up doing something that is either bad for us or bad for our relationships.  Our willpower is therefore a limited resource - hence, ego depletion.


Ego depletion is actually a fairly old concept.  However, it's gone through a tough time as of late, with several studies calling into question whether it's even a real thing.  There have even been a few studies describing something that has come to be known as "reverse ego depletion" - in other words, exercising self-control actually increases our ability to resist the urge to succumb to our temptations.  I actually think ego depletion is a real thing that impacts all of us.  Here's why.


Going back to the Snickers commercial, "You're not you when you're hungry".  If we don't take care of ourselves, we deplete that inner energy that we all have to exercise a certain degree of self-control.  We've talked about this before - "Dad is hangry again!"  We all get (at least I do) grumpy when we haven't had enough to eat.  Being "hangry" is a form of ego depletion.  We spend some much willpower fighting off our hunger pangs that we exhaust our ability to get impatient or short with one another.


Look no further than a study published a few years ago in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), entitled "Low glucose relates to greater aggression in married couples".  The subjects in this particular study were 107 married couples (at least at the start of the study, happily married couples).  The investigators measured the blood glucose levels of each couple every morning before breakfast and each evening before bedtime, every night for 21 consecutive days.  Each couple was provided a pair of Voodoo dolls (you read that correctly!) and were instructed to stick from 0 to 51 pins into the Voodoo doll depending upon how they felt about their spouse on that particular night.  There was a strong and inverse correlation between an individual's blood glucose level and the number of pins that he or she stuck into the other individual's Voodoo doll!  In other words, getting hangry (i.e., having a low blood glucose at bedtime) led to higher aggressive impulses, likely due to ego depletion!  How's that for science!?!?!


So, what is the lesson here for all of us?  I think the Snickers commercials provide a very important lesson (in addition to being very humorous).  What happens in each commercial?  Someone, a spouse or friend, recognizes when the individual in the commercial has gotten hangry and not acting like they normally do (hopefully).  What does that spouse or friend do?  They hand a Snickers bar to the individual and ask, "Better?"  At least in every commercial I've seen, the individual responds with a "Better!"  We need to do a better job of looking out for each other.  We know that we are all at risk for ego depletion.  We can hold each other accountable and make sure that we are all performing self-care - getting enough to eat (and eating right), taking breaks when we need to do so, especially in a stressful situation, getting enough sleep at night, and exercising regularly.  Imagine how much greater both our work lives would be if everyone looked out for each other in this way!


Next time you witness someone at work who's not acting like him- or herself, take the time to intervene.  Take the time to ask if they need to eat something, drink something, or take a short break.  Take care of each other.