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Full Bladder Improves Decision Making 229

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can't-talk-now-gotta-go dept.
anymouse writes "What should you do when you really, REALLY have to 'go'? Make important life decisions, maybe. Controlling your bladder makes you better at controlling yourself when making decisions about your future, too, according to a study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science."
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Full Bladder Improves Decision Making More

Full Bladder Improves Decision Making

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  • What if you can't get a full bladder? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by devxo ( 1963088 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:05PM (#35351166)
    I'm currently hospitalized for a longer period of time ( earlier post regarding it [slashdot.org] ) and I have a catherer, which also takes the urine immediately from the body. What should I do as I can't get a full bladder? On a side note, it's been great for playing MMO's as there's no need to get up to toilet...

    • Re:What if you can't get a full bladder? (Score:5, Funny)

      by click2005 ( 921437 ) * on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:10PM (#35351240)

      I've been in a similar situation for years. I now have scientific proof that my being 'the most indecisive person people have ever met' isn't my fault... I think.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Stenchwarrior ( 1335051 )

      I would say "lucky", but...well, you know.

      On the other hand, were you hospitalized for, say, too many strippers grinding on your shit? Or, from too much Snoo Snoo? If so then see my initial statement.

    • . . . about how MMO players wearing "Depends" are just putting themselves off their game.

      Best wishes for a fash recovery, devxo!

    • What should I do as I can't get a full bladder?

      The experiment mentioned was "participants either drank five cups of water..., or took small sips of water from five separate cups. Then, after about 40 minutes -- the amount of time it takes for water to reach the bladder -- the researchers assessed participants' self-control."

      That doesn't exactly specify it was a full bladder that was causing the effect, it might just be urine production that stimulates better decisions.

      To make sure you generate lots of urine, I recommend you drink alcohol. I'm tol

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by skids ( 119237 )

        That doesn't exactly specify it was a full bladder that was causing the effect, it might just be urine production that stimulates better decisions.

        Or just better hydration. Though I could easily see that the researchers might have also conducted studies to control for that, and the journalist been negligent in mentioning it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by EdIII ( 1114411 )

      On a side note, it's been great for playing MMO's as there's no need to get up to toilet...

      Somehow I suspect that will not give you as much of advantage as you may think it does. Truly dedicated MMO players don't seem to concern themselves with bodily functions, or where they even occur. In fact, I doubt many of them can tell that they are happening.

      The best advantage that a MMO player can have is an intercom system that allows them to request Hot Pockets and Game Fuel with a simple hotkey combo.

      • Truly dedicated MMO players don't seem to concern themselves with bodily functions, or where they even occur

        Related [vgcats.com]

    • On a side note, it's been great for playing MMO's

      Leeroy Jenkins? Is that you?

    • No matter how many people suggest it, or how high up it gets modded, avoid the tourniquet method! You might ask them to hang the collection bag from the ceiling... that should give lots of back pressure...

    • What should I do as I can't get a full bladder?

      You see? It would have been easier to decide with a full bladder.

  • Yes it quite improves decision making. (Score:3)

    by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:06PM (#35351176) Homepage Journal
    Also increases the urine that's not taken out of your bloodstream.

    and, if you keep it too much, the urine in your bladder may even get pushed back into your bloodstream and outright poison you.

    great researches come out, from the fine institutions of our scientific establishment, sometimes ....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

      If there is urine in your blood stream you have a real problem. Perhaps you mean some waste that would go into urine is not being removed from the blood.

    • Yup, I am sure paid researchers who have studied various biology, medical, and psychology works, sources, and classes for the majority of their lives have come to the conclusion that it is healthy to poison yourself with your own urine and they are now suggesting it as the one true path towards happiness and success...

      ...
      ...
      ...

      Hear that? That's the sound of Captain Picard's face hitting his palm at warp 6.
      • yeah. actually paid researches, university scientists, actually, science on our planet DOES fuck up a lot.

        http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j43 [amasci.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jdgeorge ( 18767 )

          The problem isn't the scientists. The problem is that there is a VERY large number of people using the stuff scientists discover/invent.

          • really. did you really need the examples in the link i gave above ? its about scientists, booing, despising, ridiculeing each other. then, coming 180 degrees when they are proven wrong, to suck up. quite lowly, quite unscientific.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

      Maybe you're better at making decisions because you're in a hurry to go pee and then you actually do make a decision. If your bladder was empty you wouldn't pay attention and wouldn't make a decision. Making decisions is generally a good idea.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mcvos ( 645701 )

        But rushing important life decisions doesn't sound like a terribly good idea.

        When I need to pee and need to make a decision, I go to the bathroom first, and then make the decision. Much easier that way, and in my experience I make much better decisions.

    • and, if you keep it too much, the urine in your bladder may even get pushed back into your bloodstream and outright poison you. Great researches come out, from the fine institutions of our scientific establishment, sometimes ....

      Point to me where the researcher said something like "... and there's no upper limit to this effect, so you should probably never pee again." The assumption with any medical research is that YOU DON'T OVERDO IT. You know: common sense. You can overdose on damn near everything. Vitamins are generally good for you, but they are also toxic if you take too much of some of them. Better stay away from them. Oxygen keeps you alive. Uh oh, if you hyperventilate, you pass out. Stop breathing just to be on th

  • Everyone knows... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bicx ( 1042846 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:08PM (#35351200)
    Procrastination is a lot more enjoyable with an empty bladder.

    • Procrastination is a lot more enjoyable with an empty bladder.

      Depends, I think.

      When I was a kid, the winters were cold and the house felt colder. Learning to "procrastinate" (until the morning) was a challenge, but preferable to getting up out of warm bed to stumble my way into a freezing cold bathroom.

      To this day I still sleep like a baby through the night. Unless, of course, I'm interrupted by the sounds of somebody else stumbling their way to the bathroom.

      • When I was a kid, the winters were cold and the house felt colder. Learning to "procrastinate" (until the morning) was a challenge, but preferable to getting up out of warm bed to stumble my way into a freezing cold bathroom.

        No heating in your homes you're lived in? Why not just turn the heat up a few notches and not have a freezing house?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          No heating in your homes you're lived in? Why not just turn the heat up a few notches and not have a freezing house?

          Not everyone grew up in a house with central heating.

          Old houses etc... In many nations it's not that necessary, our winters drop to about 10 C in the dead of night, of course the 40 C days we're having at the moment also suck.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mcvos ( 645701 )

          A couple of decades ago, most houses weren't anywhere near as well insulated and heated as they are nowadays.

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Haedrian ( 1676506 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:12PM (#35351258)

    So, do you want to use the bathroom or not? Take your time with this decision, we don't want you to take a rash decision on this one.

    • It seems to me that if you're sitting around thinking about various and sundry while you have a full bladder, then you've already failed at making the important decisions in life.

  • Holding it increases your blood presure. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Loether ( 769074 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:18PM (#35351318) Homepage

    I've been going to the doctor with a family member often and they were constantly taking his blood pressure. So I've been curious about the things that affect blood pressure and according one nurse if you have a full bladder your blood pressure will go up significantly. (Couldn't quickly confirm via google, could a slashdot MD confirm or refute?)

    I wonder if the increase in blood pressure do to holding it gives your brain more blood so it functions better. I wonder if there is a way to control the experiment for the blood pressure difference.

    • I've been going to the doctor with a family member often and they were constantly taking his blood pressure. So I've been curious about the things that affect blood pressure and according one nurse if you have a full bladder your blood pressure will go up significantly. (Couldn't quickly confirm via google, could a slashdot MD confirm or refute?)

      I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV.

      But I have been told by actual doctors (including the one i'm married to) that a full bladder can increase your blood pressure a little -- conversely, emptying said bladder can drop your blood pressure. If you're on the verge of fainting for whatever reason, urinating can push you right off that cliff.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by osu-neko ( 2604 )

      (Couldn't quickly confirm via google, could a slashdot MD confirm or refute?)

      I'm not an MD, but I'm an engineer, which as we all know, qualifies me to answer any question. ;)

      It makes sense. Nihil ex nihil, the liquid in your bladder is coming from your bloodstream, filtered out by the kidneys. If your bladder is full, then no more matter can be pulled out of your bloodstream (or at least significantly less than usual). The same blood system is going to have higher pressure in it if it contains more fluid than it normally would. Even if the kidneys don't stop sending matter to th

      • Not a terribly likely scenario - if you block off urine drainage from the kidney, either by tying a suture around it or having a kidney stone block off the ureter (the tube that runs from the kidney to the bladder) you set off a cascade of neurochemical events that quickly lead to elevated blood pressure - much faster than could be explained by just 'filling up' the blood vessels. The main response is from the renin-angiotensin system which is the basis for several classes of blood pressure measurement.

        I
    • From http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/why-does-blood-pressure-change-throughout-the-day.html [fitnesstipsforlife.com]:

      "The Effect of the Bladder on Blood Pressure

      Curiously enough and for no good reason, the urinary bladder influences blood pressure. Pressure is lowest when the bladder is empty. As the bladder gradually fills, blood pressure rises. Thus a pressure of 130/80 on an empty bladder may reach 160/90 when the bladder is full enough to send messages of “Please empty.” During urination, the blood pressure
  • While today modern medicine will (hopefully) prevent a bladder infection from becoming fatal, it's still nothing to play around with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death [wikipedia.org]
    • Heh, that picture of Tycho's supernova looks suspiciously like an infectious pustule.
    • From wikipedia: "Recent investigations have suggested that Tycho did not die from urinary problems but instead from mercury poisoning—extremely toxic levels of it have been found in hairs from his moustache."

  • Also good for road trips. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@tr u 7 h . o rg> on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:24PM (#35351378) Homepage

    It's also damn near impossible to fall asleep when you have to piss.

    Drink lots of water on road trips, to the point you more or less constantly have to go, and you will never doze off.

    • yeah but it will take 2X longer to get to your destination and you'll get fat frequenting the integrated fast food place at the gas station.
    • At some point you will sleep. The problem is that you will also urinate at some point. Personally, I prefer that those two facts don't overlap. If you're holding it in just so you don't fall asleep I strongly suggest pulling over on a side road for half an hour and taking a nap instead.

    • Re:Also good for road trips. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by osu-neko ( 2604 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @05:43PM (#35352242)

      If you're in danger of dozing off, you shouldn't be driving. Doing some trick to prevent you from actually dozing off is putting yourself and everyone else on the road in greater danger. This isn't a binary condition: either fully alert or dead to the world unconscious. You're still more likely to cause an accident, even if you didn't lapse into actual unconsciousness.

      "I've done it -- it keeps me fully alert, too!" Uh huh. This is every bit as believable as the drunk who insists they're not too smashed to drive. You feel fully alert. Good for you. Now pull over, take a piss, and then take a nap, resume driving when you actually are fully alert and don't require any tricks to stay awake.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gknoy ( 899301 )

        That was insightful, but brings up an interesting question: How can you tell when you're too fatigued to drive safely? Clearly there are signs, at which point you are FAR too tired to drive safely, but how do you know where the line is? I'd hate to be driving tired and not realize it.

      • How do you differentiate between "I feel fully alert" and "I am fully alert"?

        If it can be proved that the natural condition of a full bladder actually leads to a physiological change, i.e. increased adrenaline and heightened awareness, then that would make it a useful trick. Comparing it to alcohol, which is an outside agent that always has the reverse effect of depressing the body's responses, is a fallacious analogy.

    • Some years back a man survived in the Indian Ocean for days after his boat sank. He said that when he grew up in north west Australia, his father once told him: "Son, if you ever get stuck out in the desert then what ever you do don't take a piss". Apparently following this advice helped him survive when floating out in the ocean without drinking water.

      Probably helped by both preventing dehydration and staying awake.

  • Darl McBride, Aaron Barr and other people who are routinely full of shit make bad decisions on a daily basis.

    I call shenanigans.

  • Holding your bladder can also be bad for you. Women, for instance, can have serious issues holding they're bladder too long. OTOH, one life decision will be made for you: going to the hospital and picking up some antibiotics.

  • Controlling your bladder makes you better at controlling yourself

    Urine control.
    Maybe they could use this to treat ADD/ADHD? Urine Therapy
    Perhaps this could be used as a form of psycho analysis? Urine my head.
    Or, how about conflict resolution? Urine my face

  • How would you rate the usefulness of having to pee versus, say, playing Go? I'm pretty sure teaching yourself to think carefully about why to do something (i.e. impact, value, future plans) and consider alternative courses of action (i.e. shit that could happen in response, and how you're going to handle that variation) is going to improve the decisions you make more than, say, teaching yourself not to piss in your pants after a 44oz cocacola.
  • Geewizzz. Someone must have leaked that story. With all that psychology It must be going to the head.

  • Eh hemm.... (Score:3)

    by 2names ( 531755 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:42PM (#35351562)
    No shit.

  • I must've been a genius! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rob the Bold ( 788862 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @04:54PM (#35351674)

    I served as the chairman of a not-for-profit board for a while. And our meetings just seem to be interminable.

    Finally, I offered to be the permanent refreshment-bringer. I purchased only spicy or salty snacks, and only caffeinated beverages -- actually, just a tiny non-zero number of non-caffeinated ones to prevent moaning from the "I can't have caffeine" board member.

    My idea wasn't to ensure good decisions, but just that something got decided and we didn't sit around all night trying to redirect back to the subject at hand.

  • Remember 4th grade slumber parties when you put your sleeping friend's hand in a bowl of warm water, to see if the oceans will spill over from dreamland ?

  • When my bladder is full, I suddenly decide to pee.

  • I've worked with some folks in my career who should have been pissed upon.

    "Ah, Donald Trump! I've been expecting you! You want to make a deal? Well, I'm a gonna whip it out, and then you can try to deal with this .. ."

    On the other hand, a lot of the time that I've been working with certain executives . . . I think that their top skill is doing sword fights down at the pisser.

    Hmmn . . . time to update my skills profile . . . "En Garde!"

  • The Ghost of Tycho Brahe just read this and gave a the finger to the summary, the article, and the people studying this.

    "You guys, you just don't know what you're messing with here"

    Last words of Tycho Brahe:

    "Jeg har brug for at tisse så meget, at mine tænder er flydende!"

    --
    BMO

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bmo ( 77928 )

      Well that sucks.

      I just looked and realized that Slashdot doesn't support unicode.

      It's 2011. Fix this.

      --
      BMO

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mcvos ( 645701 )

        I just looked and realized that Slashdot doesn't support unicode.

        A sad state of affairs indeed. However, Slashdot does have a preview button.

  • I just know I'd end up deciding all over myself.

  • Well, I knew that (Score:4, Funny)

    by dmomo ( 256005 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @05:46PM (#35352266)

    And this is why I am pissing my life away.

  • On the edge of my chair (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FencingLion ( 1553981 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @06:23PM (#35352568)

    My secret weapon in the music competitions of my youth was to forgo visiting the restroom until after the performance. I felt having to pee gave me the edge I needed.

  • holding it increases the chances of a number of medical problems, including gout and cancer
    when you gotta go you gotta go

  • Don't be too polite, and go if you have to!

    "According to Kepler's first hand account, Tycho had refused to leave the banquet to relieve himself because it would have been a breach of etiquette.[20][21] After he had returned home he was no longer able to urinate, except, eventually, in very small quantities and with excruciating pain. "

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe#Death [wikipedia.org]
  • Never make any important decisions or initiate any important activities when you have a full bowel or bladder. Mark my words.
  • I have a full bladder right now and I'm sitting here reading slashdot so I call BS on this article's conclusions!

  • I'll never look at that thing the same.

    That guy looks like he's really gotta go.

  • Wanna go back to my place? ..before you decide, why don't you go use the restroom? I'll be right here when you're ready to make up your mind.

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