Hungry Judge Effect

The hungry judge effect is the empirical finding that decision-makers, most famously parole board judges, tend to make more favorable rulings early in a work session or immediately after a food break, with favorable rulings declining as time since the last break increases. The effect was reported in a widely cited 2011 study by the researchers Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav and Liora Avnaim-Pesso, which examined more than one thousand parole board decisions in Israel and found that the proportion of favorable rulings dropped from around sixty five percent at the start of a session to nearly zero before a break, then rose again after the judges ate. The finding has been influential, though also contested on methodological grounds by later researchers, in discussions of how mental fatigue and depleted glucose levels might influence high-stakes professional judgment even among trained decision-makers striving for consistency.