Sleep restriction reduces positive social emotions and desire to connect with others

Abstract

Feeling connected with others and experiencing positive interpersonal interactions is associated with physical health and psychological functioning. Despite the importance of social experiences, experimental studies investigating how sleep impacts social connections and positive social experiences are limited. The current study sought to examine how sleep loss impacted social motivation and emotions. Healthy emerging adults (N=53; 83% female, ages 18-28 years) were randomly assigned to one night of sleep restriction (4h time in bed) or typical sleep (8h time in bed). Following the experimental night, participants reported on their desire to pursue social connections, and completed a reflection task where they wrote about something generous someone did for them. After the reflection, participants reported on their positive and negative social emotions (gratitude, connectedness, guilt, indebtedness). Coding of the reflections was conducted to extract emotional tone and social words used. Sleep restricted participants reported reduced motivation to pursue social connections, and less gratitude and feelings of connectedness after the reflection compared to the control condition. Sleep restricted participants also used fewer socially-oriented words (i.e., words focused on other people) when reflecting on this interpersonal event. No differences emerged in guilt or indebtedness or emotional tone of the reflection. Findings suggest that sleep loss may decrease desire to engage in social interactions and reduces positive social emotions. These findings expand the limited body of research on sleep and social functioning by examining the impact of partial sleep restriction on social motivation, and on the experience of social emotions within a positive interpersonal context.

Understanding the cognitive and neuroimaging bases underlying the detrimental impact of sleep deprivation on reciprocity

“… 34 , 43 Second, from the perspective of reciprocity behavior driven by external factors, the sense of obligation is suggested to drive the participant’s obey the norm of reciprocity due to external factors such as the external pressure of the benefactor’s expectation for repayment and reputation in response to others’ favor. 43 , 58 Consistent with previous studies, 9 there were no significant changes in sense of obligation following sleep loss. Considering that our findings suggest that there is no significant change in benefactor’s expectation of repayment following TSD, this may partly explain why sleep deprivation does not significantly alter the sense of obligation.…”

“… 4 Total sleep deprivation (TSD) not only affects individual cognitive functions, such as attention, vigilance, and memory, 5 but also raises the risk of physical diseases and mental illnesses. 3 , 6 Recently, emerging research has demonstrated the detrimental impacts of TSD on social functions, 7 such as causing lower empathy, 8 decreased desire to engage in social interactions, reduced gratitude, 9 social withdrawal, 10 decreased helping behavior, 11 increased immoral behaviors, 12 , 13 and decreased trust and cooperation in social dilemmas. 14 , 15 …”

Sleep loss and emotion: A systematic review and meta-analysis of over 50 years of experimental research.

“…Diminished positive affect may also serve a more direct protective function when internal sleep pressure is high by reducing an individual’s motivation to seek out social interactions or other pleasurable experiences at a time when cognitive processes and physical capabilities are impaired. Indeed, sleep loss has been shown to result in a desire to maintain more social distance from others (Ben Simon, Vallat, et al, 2020; Palmer, John-Henderson, et al, 2023). It is also possible that the influence of sleep loss on negative affect may be altered based on certain situational characteristics or may only occur for some individuals.…”

Latent Class Analysis of Sleep in Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients and its Influencing Factors

“…There is a clear association between social interactions and sleep, as indicated by several studies demonstrating that social isolation in older adults is inversely associated with sleep quality and predicts poorer sleep quality in subsequent years [ 45, 46 ]. Study found that restricting sleep duration in adults could diminish their inclination to engage in socialization and reduce positive social emotions [ 47 ]. Similarly, the present study revealed lower engagement in social activities among patients with the difficulty falling asleep type of MCI.…”