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reference
Ben Simon E, Vallat R, Rossi A, Walker MP. Lack of sleep leads to the withdrawal of human assistance from individuals, groups and large societies.PLoS Biol. 2022;20(8):e3001733.
Publication target
To determine whether night-time fluctuations in sleep quality or duration influence the desire to help others
Key to take away
Those who sleep well are friendlier. Not sleeping well reduces people's ability to be kind.
design
The research consisted of three separate studies that included:
- eine Crossover-Interventionsstudie
- eine Längsschnittstudie
- eine epidemiologische Studie
Participant
Study 1 included 24 healthy participants (aged 18–26 years, 54% female). Investigators excluded people whose recent activities may have disrupted their sleep-wake cycle (e.g., recent travel between time zones).
Study 2 recruited 136 people who then self-reported their sleep duration and sleep quality and also completed questionnaires assessing their desire to help others. Accelerometer watches recorded their sleep and researchers analyzed the data for the four-day study period.
Study 3 collected data from over 3 million charitable donations made between 2001 and 2016 in the United States and examined the impact of the DST change on donation amounts.
Interventions
In Study 1, participants took part in a counterbalanced crossover experiment with two conditions: 1 night of good sleep versus 1 night of no sleep, and these conditions were separated by 7 days. After each condition (sleep or no sleep), participants completed standardized auxiliary questionnaires between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.; They also performed a social cognitive task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan at around 10 a.m
Study 2 was a microlongitudinal design protocol in which participants completed auxiliary questionnaires and sleep diaries on four consecutive days under free-living conditions.
Study 3 examined large-scale altruistic donation behavior ((link removed)) during the Daylight Saving Time (DST) transition.
These three studies were brought together to provide a more comprehensive measure of the impact of sleep disturbances on a specific aspect of social functioning. Study 1 involved controlled sleep manipulations (sleep vs. no sleep), while Study 2 examined changes in sleep quality and duration under free living conditions. Study 3 looked for a measurable impact on social behavior.
Key findings
Study 1: The first study showed that at the individual level, one night of sleep deprivation triggers the withdrawal of the desire to help another person, both strangers and family. The fMRI results showed that withdrawal of human help is associated with the deactivation of key nodes within the social cognition network in the brain that facilitates prosociality.
Study 2: Data from the second study showed that poorer sleep efficiency from night to night was associated with a decrease in the desire to help others the next day. Furthermore, reduced levels of assistance were evident across individuals, so overall poorer sleep efficiency was associated with a lower desire to help others. These effects were significant and independent of changes in sleep amount, and they remained significant when controlling for trait empathy scores and daily mood swings. Such results suggest that poor sleep, either individually or relative to one's habitual sleep profile, significantly and markedly reduces prosocial helping.
Study 3: Data analyzed in Study 3 showed, as researchers had suspected, that the transition to daylight saving time was associated with a significant decrease in altruistic decisions to give away money compared to the weeks before or after the transition. To illustrate, the magnitude of the sleep effect corresponds to a reduction in the amount of donations donated by approximately 10%.
Effects on practice
Taken together, these three studies demonstrate that inadequate sleep (both in quantity and quality) is a degrading force that affects whether people want to help one another. This creates a measurable impact and reduces the tendency for it to occur. The researchers observed the effects of poor sleep at three different levels of the social scale: within the individual, between individuals and at the nationwide level.
These results seem obvious and predictable and should come as no surprise. We already assume that someone who hasn't slept long enough or well enough will exhibit social behavior that might be described as "moody." Ask a parent. While this study specifically looked at one trait, generosity, we can expect other synonymous social traits to be negatively affected as well. Simply put, poor sleep makes it harder to be kind.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends adults get 7 to 8 hours of good sleep each night.1But a 2016 CDC report suggests that a third of U.S. adults are getting less.2In the U.S., 70% of adults report “not getting enough sleep at least one night a month, and 11% report inadequate sleep every night.”3
In a 2008 report, about 29% of U.S. adults reported sleeping less than 7 hours per night, and 50 to 70 million suffered from chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders. 2006 data collected through the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System showed that just over 10% of adults received inadequate rest or sleep on all previous 30 days.3
Many assume that there is some kind of epidemic of poor sleep that is getting worse over time. However, in an article by Youngstedt et al. In 2015, UCLA researchers questioned the assumption that we are increasingly sleep-deprived. After reviewing data from the last 50 years, they reported that they found little evidence that people ever actually slept more than they do today, and "challenged the idea of a modern epidemic of inadequate sleep."4
In other words, while many people struggle to get enough sleep today, this may not be worse than in years past.
We know that poor sleep is linked to poor health. It can increase your chances of developing dementia, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and breast, colon, ovarian and prostate cancer.5Poor sleep also affects performance in everyday tasks such as working or driving.
Sleep deprivation not only makes people less generous and kind - it also makes them meaner. And sicker.
It's not just generosity that suffers from lack of sleep. A recent study in which young adults (mean age 20.8 years, N=23) were kept awake "found that acute sleep deprivation limited to a 24-hour period increases negative emotional states such as anxiety, fatigue, confusion, etc." Depression. Lack of sleep leads to increased inflammation and decreased cortisol levels in the morning and is associated with deficits in alertness and impulsivity. Taken together, these results suggest that individuals experiencing 24 hours of sleep deprivation produce systemic changes in inflammation and endocrine function while increasing negative emotions.”6
Sleep deprivation not only makes people less generous and kind - it also makes them meaner. And sicker.
A recently published study reports that poor sleep is associated with a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Analysis of data from 7,850 study participants showed that “sleep problems were associated with a 75% increased risk of cardiovascular disease (OR: 1.75; 95% CI 1.41, 2.16), more than twice the risk of heart failure (CHF) (OR: 2.28; 95% CI 1.69, 3.09), an um 44% increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) (OR: 1.44; 95% CI 1.12, 1.85). The risk of angina pectoris or a heart attack has approximately doubled (angina pectoris (OR: 1.96; 95% CI 1.40, 2.74) and myocardial infarction (OR: 2.05; 95% CI 1.67, 2.53) and 78%).”7
Of course, associations do not prove causality. Maybe people with cardiovascular disease don't sleep well at all because of the threat of illness. The long-term effects of chronic sleep loss cannot be demonstrated using the usual means of a randomized clinical trial.
Obviously, poor sleep is bad for our individual health. This study by Ben Simon et al. suggests that poor sleep has an impact on society and the social networks in which we live. As the authors note in the introduction to their work: "Humans help each other. Helping is a prominent feature of Homo Sapiens."
This is a human trait whose magnitude we may not fully realize. In 2019, charitable giving was approximately $450 billion in the United States and £10 billion in the United Kingdom (for 2017–2018). About half of people in the United States, Europe and Asia say they donate to charity or help a stranger each month.8
The willingness to help other people seems to be ingrained in our psyche and has been extensively researched and discussed as to its origins and purpose. Some consider it to be the result of evolutionary forces9as well as something we learn as members of a society. Neuroscientists can now identify the regions of the brain that form the social cognition network that regulates empathy and the desire to provide compassionate help. This study showed that lack of sleep severely affects this region and reduces generosity.
Many people strive to go through life sleeping less, as if that were a sign of ability or competence. Some even seem to brag about how little sleep they “need” as if their sleep deficit was a good thing.
We have to ask patients about their sleep. But my other thought after reading this study is how to integrate the specific connection between poor sleep and lower generosity into clinical practice. This certainly gives us another poor sleep symptom to add to our list of symptoms. However, patients never come to us with the main complaint that they feel “less generous.” We probably won't add a question about charitable donations to our intake forms. Patients may exhibit varying degrees of “friendliness” or sociability when interacting with you or your office staff during their visit. Rather than simply recording that a patient is “brusque or grumpy,” we might consider that such behaviors could be a signal that we need to examine sleep behavior more closely.
This study suggests that our efforts to counteract unhealthy sleep habits and help individual patients sleep better may have a multiplier effect, not only improving their own health but also potentially increasing their innate tendency to be generous. and this increase in generosity can also benefit other people, especially those in need.
(link removed)