Sleepless Nights Make People More Selfish and Asocial, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A study found losing just one hour of rest could kill people's desire to help others, even relatives and close friends. The team noted that a bad night appeared to dampen activity in the part of the brain that encouraged social behavior. "We discovered that sleep loss acts as a trigger of asocial behavior, reducing the innate desire of humans to help one another," said Prof Matthew Walker, co-author of the study at the University of California, Berkeley. "In a way, the less sleep you get, the less social and more selfish you become." Writing in the PLoS Biology journal, the team suggest that a chronic sleep deficit could harm social bonds and compromise the altruistic instincts that shape society. "Considering the essentiality of humans helping in maintaining cooperative, civilized societies, together with the robust erosion of sleep time over the last 50 years, the ramifications of these discoveries are highly relevant to how we shape the societies we wish to live in," said Walker.
The team examined the willingness of 160 participants to help others with a "self-reported altruism questionnaire", which they completed after a night's sleep. Participants responded to different social scenarios on a scale from "I would stop to help" to "I would ignore them." In one experiment involving 24 participants, the researchers compared answers from the same person after a restful night and after 24 hours without sleep. The results revealed a 78% decline in self-reported eagerness to help others when tired. The team then performed brain scans of those participants and found a short night was associated with reduced activity in the social cognitive brain network, a region involved in social behavior. Participants were as reluctant to assist friends and family as strangers, the researchers said. "A lack of sleep impaired the drive to help others regardless of whether they were asked to help strangers or close relatives. That is, sleep loss triggers asocial, anti-helping behavior of a broad and indiscriminate impact," said Walker.
To determine whether altruism takes a hit in the real world, the team then tracked more than 3m charitable donations in the US before and after clocks were shifted an hour forward to daylight saving time, suggesting a shorter period of sleep. They found a 10% drop in donations after the transition. "Our study adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that inadequate sleep not only harms the mental and physical wellbeing of an individual but also compromises the bonds between individuals, and even the altruistic sentiment of an entire nation," said Walker. Luckily, we can catch up on sleep. Walker said: "The positive note emerging from all our studies is that once sleep is adequate and sufficient the desire to help others is restored. But it's important to note that it is not only sleep duration that is relevant to helping. We found that the factor that was most relevant was actually sleep quality, above and beyond sleep quantity," he added.
The team examined the willingness of 160 participants to help others with a "self-reported altruism questionnaire", which they completed after a night's sleep. Participants responded to different social scenarios on a scale from "I would stop to help" to "I would ignore them." In one experiment involving 24 participants, the researchers compared answers from the same person after a restful night and after 24 hours without sleep. The results revealed a 78% decline in self-reported eagerness to help others when tired. The team then performed brain scans of those participants and found a short night was associated with reduced activity in the social cognitive brain network, a region involved in social behavior. Participants were as reluctant to assist friends and family as strangers, the researchers said. "A lack of sleep impaired the drive to help others regardless of whether they were asked to help strangers or close relatives. That is, sleep loss triggers asocial, anti-helping behavior of a broad and indiscriminate impact," said Walker.
To determine whether altruism takes a hit in the real world, the team then tracked more than 3m charitable donations in the US before and after clocks were shifted an hour forward to daylight saving time, suggesting a shorter period of sleep. They found a 10% drop in donations after the transition. "Our study adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that inadequate sleep not only harms the mental and physical wellbeing of an individual but also compromises the bonds between individuals, and even the altruistic sentiment of an entire nation," said Walker. Luckily, we can catch up on sleep. Walker said: "The positive note emerging from all our studies is that once sleep is adequate and sufficient the desire to help others is restored. But it's important to note that it is not only sleep duration that is relevant to helping. We found that the factor that was most relevant was actually sleep quality, above and beyond sleep quantity," he added.
needs to take care of one's self (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have indeed found that my lack of sleep directly correlates to how often I say "no shit Sherlock".
In this week's issue... (Score:2)
....of Duh! Magazine!
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Also covered in Captain Obvious Magazine.
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And in the same magazine:
More Selfish and Asocial People Make Sleepless Nights, Another Study Finds
Science News! (Score:2)
We needed a study to know that being tired makes you cranky?
Re:Science News! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because sometimes things that seem blindingly obvious turn out to not be true. You need proper studies to be certain.
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Indeed. And some times those false "obvious" assumptions do a lot of harm.
Sometimes not obvious (Score:3)
Yes, because sometimes things that seem blindingly obvious turn out to not be true. You need proper studies to be certain.
There's a meme about giving sugary foods to children makes them hyperactive. It's blindingly obvious... but it happens not to be true.
This was studied in double-blind manner, and parents couldn't reliably tell when their children had eaten sugary foods or not. Hyperactive children are simply hyperactive for other reasons.
So yeah, sometimes we need to do the studies to tell whether something is actually true.
Bear in mind that there's actually a way to measure a person's selfishness and antisocialness. That's
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Bear in mind that there's actually a way to measure a person's selfishness and antisocialness.
Just a point of clarification, they said asocial and not anti-social. It's mostly a distinction of degree, but still a distinction. Asocial is more about indifference, anti-social leans more into active dislike or contempt.
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Would you happen to have a link or title for that study? I'm interested in reading it.
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Yes, because sometimes things that seem blindingly obvious turn out to not be true. You need proper studies to be certain.
[citation needed] :-)
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In other news, people who lose sleep because of an overactive sex life tend to be more cheerful in the office, annoying those around them with their incessant happy whistling.
Amazing that sleep deprived parents aren't worse (Score:2)
And somehow the human race still replicates itself.
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They do not know what is to come before they become parents. And later, habit kicks in. If becoming a parent was a rational, informed decision, the human race would have ended a long time ago.
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If becoming a parent was a rational, informed decision, the human race would have ended a long time ago.
Great Quotes of Slashdot History! XD
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You should write a book ;-)
Am I crazy (Score:1)
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You could be more or less social or empathetic for any kind of cause. This only proposes is that lack of sleep is one of the possible causes for being less social and less empathetic. So that's pretty much the only inference that can be made here that if you don't get a full night rest there's a "higher likelihood" that you'll be less social and less empathetic.
Anecdotal evidence that a lot of people who work together with other people could cite as well as idioms like
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Or maybe dealing with idiots all day makes one less social and empathetic.
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At least not a colloquially "or" which is commonly used as an either or/mutually exclusive situation. A logic gate OR, definitely.
Doing research on stuff like this may seem like a really stupid waste of resources, but that's part of the scientific process.
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Also, the part where they talk about 1 hour less sleep is actually a bigger change than that; it is a shifting of the whole schedule to be one hour earlier. They need to establish that schedule-shifting of this sort is exactly the same as retaining a normal schedule, but just sleeping one hour less. Perhaps the effect is the same as if people woke up an hour earlier and sat around drinking a hot beverage... but maybe it isn't.
Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall hearing that the vast majority of people in modern society suffer from mild to moderate chronic sleep deprivation - between work, Netflix, and correcting people who are wrong on the internet, who has time for a full 8+ hours of sleep every night?
If that biases people toward sociopathic behavior, perhaps it's a contributing factor to the increasingly acidic tone of "civil" discourse?
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I dunno, I sleep plenty, and Im still a grumpy old bastard. :)
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I dunno, I sleep plenty, and Im still a grumpy old bastard. :)
Well now imagine how grumpy you'd be if you didn't get enough sleep!
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Talked to a guy in the hospital once. Hard working fellow, slept only 5 hours a day. Was known as a very tough guy at work. He had a stroke. Almost killed him, but pulled through after some heavy CPR. He blamed his sleepinghabbits. Still had terrible migraines. The guy was only around his 50s.
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True. We gotta cut back on work.
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You really think more Netflix and correcting people online will help? :-D
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More than work at least.
ah shut up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Crossed Wiring? (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall hearing that people who were ill had a similar behaviour, avoiding the company of others. Which is useful in an evolutionary context (don't really want to send the illness through the tribe).
I'm wondering if this is the same thing happening here. Either the body is confusing sleep-deprivation with illness or it's triggering the same effect deliberately.
Also FTA:
“Doctors, nurses and the police are often chronically tired, and the findings suggest that their ability to help under difficult and demanding circumstances may be compromised.”
This would seem to imply the practice of bizarrely long shifts for doctors and nurses is even less justifiable than previously thought.
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Can confirm (Score:2)
Now will all you assholes please go away?
Tired people are cranky (Score:2)
Shock result there.
It's true (Score:2)
Force me to work for you before 9am and watch me do what I can to fuck your day up.
On the other hand... (Score:2)
I'm sure the study was quite rigorous and all that... but exactly how sure are they that the correlation they're looking for isn't more along the lines of something like this? -- People are inherently more honest when they're too tired to pretend to care about your crap.
What a surprise (Score:1)
Yeah, well, fuck off! (Score:2)
Ig Noble Nominee (Score:1)
A coincidence ?!? (Score:1)
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Wow! (Score:2)
Like, I've never heard mothers say 'the kid is quite sour today, it didnâ(TM)t sleep well last night'.
My grandmother knew this and she was norn in 1912.
Also, it's not the sleep per se but dreaming, which, among many other things acts as a kind of therapy. Since the dream state takes larger and larger portions of the sleep cycle (4 phases identified so far, dreaming is the last) as the night progresses, cutting sleep deprives you disproportionately from dreaming.
How many times I have to point out to M.
I believe the technical term for this state is (Score:2)
Margaret Thatcher slept 4 hours a night (Score:1)