Surprisingly, making important decisions with a full bladder may not increase impulsivity, but rather reduce it.
Making relevant decisions when you are anxious to go to the bathroom may seem like a bad idea, but a study published in 2011 cited by suggests exactly the opposite: the urgent need to urinate may be associated with a greater capacity for self-control and less impulsive choices.
The research was based on an idea already known in psychology: people’s levels of impulsivity vary according to the physical and emotional context.
A fomefor example, can increase the tendency to act on impulse not only in relation to food, but also in financial decisions. Other studies had already shown that certain sexual stimuli can lead men to prefer immediate rewards, even if smaller, rather than greater benefits obtained later.
It was in this context that a team of researchers decided to test whether bladder pressure could have a similar — or, on the contrary, opposite — effect on decision making.
In a first trial, 193 university students performed two tasks. The first consisted of identifying the meaning of words presented on the screen. The second, more demanding in terms of self-control, asked participants to indicate the color of the words, countering the automatic impulse to read them.
After the tasks, participants rated how urgently they needed to urinate. The results showed that a full bladder had no impact on the first task, but was associated with better performance on the second. The greater the urgency reported, the better the ability to inhibit the automatic response.
In a second trial, researchers directly controlled the amount of liquid ingested. Some participants drank little water while others drank a lot. After a 45-minute intermediate task, they were faced with choices between smaller, immediate rewards or larger, but delayed rewards. Participants with greater urinary urgency tended to choose the most advantageous option in the long term.
The team concluded that inhibition signals generated by bladder pressure can “spill over” into other areas of behavior, helping to interrupt impulses to make other decisions.
In a third trial, it was enough to expose participants to words related to urine, such as “bathroom” or “bladder” to increase the subjective sensation of urgency and favor less impulsive choices.
The conclusion is curious to say the least: a full bladder can, in certain circumstances, help you make more prudent decisions.
