Blood, Sugar, and Compassion

Increasingly more animal advocates are studying the psychology of compassion, looking into aspects such as why people make certain choices around meat eating, change their diets, or decide to help animals. Recent research has examined the effectiveness of different cover photos on leaflets, looked into outreach language, and revealed whether discussing health or ethics is more likely to change hearts and minds. A study published in the journal Appetite takes a different approach, looking at the way that an individual’s blood sugar level may encourage compassionate behavior.

Based on the premise (and supporting research literature showing) that guilt can be a primary motivator in performing good deeds, researchers conducted a controlled study using glucose (sugar) beverages, placebo beverages, and different states of “depletion,” and asked participants to watch a movie about butchering animals. Afterwards they were required to perform several tests based around emotion and “prosocial” behavior. The study found that “depleted participants felt less guilty and helped less than non-depleted participants.” In other words, when a subject is hungry – or doesn’t have their needs met on a basic level – they are less likely to help others. If someone has their basic needs fulfilled, they are more likely to feel guilt and want to help others around them.

For animal advocates, this simple and somewhat fundamental observation could have a range of implications, from encouraging people by providing snacks at film screenings to promoting more food-based activism in conjunction with ethics-based actions.