02:25 PM
Friday 26 August 2022
A new study from the University of Berkeley, USA, has found that the quality of our sleep recently can affect how generous we are to others, and that sleep deprivation may lead to reduced generosity in people.
To test the link between lack of sleep and generosity, the researchers, led by neuroscientist Eti Ben Simon, chose groups of tired people due to lack of sleep, distributed over three studies with different methodologies:
The first study enlisted 21 volunteers with 24 hours of sleep deprivation to test their willingness to help in a range of scenarios such as helping a stranger carry their shopping bags or giving up their bus seat for someone else.
They then asked the participants to repeat the answer to the altruism questionnaire normally after falling asleep.
The researchers also examined the participants’ brain activity levels using functional magnetic resonance imaging, whose analysis showed that sleep deprivation is associated with decreased activity in the area of the brain associated with social cognition that regulates our social interactions with others. The change in brain activity was not related to the quality of sleep, but only to the quantity.
In the second study, researchers asked 171 volunteers, recruited online, to keep a sleep diary before taking the questionnaire, to rate levels of selfishness based on responses to questionnaires completed by study participants, regardless of participants’ empathy traits.
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In both experiments, the researchers found that nearly 80% of participants were less willing to help others when sleep deprived than when they were resting.
The third and final study required the research team to analyze more than 3.8 million charitable donations, made in the United States, before and after daylight saving time, which causes the entire population to lose one hour of sleep.
Interestingly, donations decreased by 10% in the days after the change of hours, compared to the weeks before and after the move.
“When people lose an hour of sleep, there is a clear impact on our innate human kindness and motivation to help other people in need,” said scientist Ben Simon.
Although the study demonstrated that sleep deprivation had a significant effect on participants in the altruistic questionnaire, this effect was short-lived and disappeared upon return to normal sleep patterns.
Accordingly, Ben Simon believes that there is a ready solution to the problem of chronic sleep deprivation in the world, by promoting sleep and allowing people to get the sleep they need, which may reflect a positive impact on the societies in which we live.
Sleep, emotional and social behavior are two sides of the same coin
Scientists at the University of California’s Center for Human Sleep Science constantly urge adults to get enough sleep for mental and emotional health and emotional well-being.
Studies from the center have found that people who are deprived of enough sleep feel lonely and are more likely to not engage with others.
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Just spending one night without sleep or not enough sleep is enough to put people into social isolation, because of the feeling of loneliness that they feel the next day, and worse, the feeling of alienation from them, and the delusion that they are not socially attractive.