I’d like to share this short video, Snacks and Punishment, that highlights the impact of needing a snack break on decision-making by judges (and doctors).
Studies have shown that judges hand out more punitive sentences towards the end of a session, when they’re more likely to be hungry, tired and in need of a break... And then they would be more lenient again after a break.
WOW! Judges make different decisions based on what they eat. The Court Improvement Training Academy CITA at the University of Washington has been offering trainings to Dependency Judges to educate them on the impact of food, sleep and exercise and decision making. What is most important about this video is that if the decisions of well-educated Judges can be influenced by whether or not they ate before a high stakes decision, then our decisions are likely affected too.
The take home message is that for important meetings like shelter care meetings, visitations, and evaluations, we may want to help ourselves and others to be at their best by making sure that we have food with protein in it before we have to make our best decisions.
Watch Snacks and Punishment for the video on Judges and check out the video on Optimizing Your Brain and see the handouts that are there for you to use and share.