As an introverted person (shout out to all my other INFJs), I am the queen of avoiding social situations. Especially when I've been around other people for a while, I can morph into a ninja of evasion.
For example, when I used to work in an office, I had a mental handbook of reasons why I had to eat lunch at my desk. The handbook included things like, "I have to finish this report." Or, "I'm on a budget so I can't go out."
But in reality, I just wanted to be alone. No harm in that, right?
Well, it turns out there may be. According to a German research group, eating alone in an office could actually affect how your brain works later in the day.
How eating in your office affects your brain
To figure out how your lunch affects your work, the research group set up an experiment to determine if meal situations—independent of the caloric and nutritional value of the food—affected people's cognitive processes.
To do this, they first had two groups of people do a series of mental tests before lunch. The first group then ate a lunch selected by someone else in a bland office environment, alone, and without much time to enjoy their food. Think PB&J in the office lunchroom.
The second group had lunch with others in a restaurant, had a choice of food, and had enough time to enjoy their meal. The second group also had time for the 15 to 20 minute walk to and from the restaurant and the lab where the experiments took place, whereas the first group ate lunch next door to the lab.
After lunch, the researchers had the two groups do another series of mental tests, and compared the results. And what they found was surprising: the group who ate at the restaurant showed a lowered cognitive control after their meal, while the office-eating group did not.
What is cognitive control?
For those of you who are not psychoanalytical researchers, cognitive control is "the process by which goals or plans influence behavior." Basically, cognitive control is how we actively control our response to certain situations.
For example, we as humans have the ability to stop ourselves from eating all the doughnuts (as much as we want to) because we know what they do to our booty, and we don't like that. On the other hand, my hedgehog Penelope does not have cognitive control; if presented with a mealworm, her reaction will not be shaped by how her past experiences with mealworms mesh with her current body goals. She's just going to eat the mealworm.
According to a German research group, eating alone in an office could actually affect how your brain works later in the day.
So back to the study—in this case, the researchers found that the group who ate at a restaurant had less cognitive control after their meal than the office-eating folks. More specifically, the restaurant-eaters were less concerned about the errors they made in their post-meal tests than their office-eating counterparts.
Wait. Isn't less cognitive control a bad thing?
I know what you're thinking: less cognitive control sounds horrible. And in some ways, it is. I mean, how would we feel if we ate 24 glazed doughnuts every morning?
But in some situations, like when you want to be more creative, reducing your cognitive control can actually be a good thing.
But in some situations, like when you want to be more creative, reducing your cognitive control can actually be a good thing.
To explain how this works, a group from the University of Pennsylvania gave this example: children are often better than adults at trying to think of atypical or creative ways of using an object. The reason adults often struggle is because their prior experiences with the object shape the way they react to it. Children's brains, on the other hand, are less likely to bias their response to the object based on pre-existing knowledge.
So, without as much prior experience (and thus, less cognitive control over their responses), children are more likely to come up with more creative ideas for using the object.
The German group did point out, however, that less cognitive control isn't great in all situations. For example, if you work in a lab or factory where attention to detail and close self-monitoring is important, losing some cognitive control may not be awesome.
But if your job requires flexibility and creativity, maybe it's time to ditch the tupperware and treat yo' self to a nice lunch with friends. After all, it's just plain science.
Do you eat lunch alone or with someone else? Do you notice a difference between the two?
