According to a new study, people who are sleep deprived feel more lonely and are less likely to interact with others, avoiding personal contact much like people who have social anxiety. Even worse, that aloof vibe makes people who lack sleep more socially undesirable to others. Additionally, even those who are well-rested experience loneliness after only a brief interaction with a sleep-deprived person, starting a chain reaction of social isolation.
The results, which are published in the journal Nature Communications, are the first to demonstrate a reciprocal association between sleep loss and social isolation, providing fresh insight into the epidemic of loneliness that is sweeping the world. Maybe you have discovered in your own life that getting less sleep makes it harder to call a friend or attend a social event.
(Learn all about Parasomnia here)
Would it surprise you to learn that this sleep-deprived loneliness is contagious? That is what a team of researchers led by Professor Matthew Walker at the Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley discovered. According to them, “We were first curious to discover if people were less likely to socialize if they did not get enough sleep. So, the first question we asked was primarily concerned with social withdrawal after sleep loss. We soon discovered that social disengagement and loneliness both offer serious health hazards and are associated with poorer sleep.
Knowing that sleep deprivation can lead to feelings of loneliness, the team conducted additional research using functional MRI and electrical brain recordings to examine the neural mechanisms that lead to decreased socioemotional functioning after sleep deprivation and how to bring these mechanisms back to normal after a healthy sleep.
After seeing films of study participants, viewers were asked to rate their own levels of loneliness in order to determine whether sleep loss-induced alienation is contagious. The fact that normally healthy observers experienced alienation after watching just a 60-second clip of a lonely person startled the researchers.
Finally, scientists investigated whether a single night of restful or restless sleep can have an impact on how lonely a person feels the following day. Through a standardized survey that included inquiries like “How often do you feel isolated from others” and “Do you feel you don’t have anyone to talk to,” they monitored each person’s level of loneliness.
Notably, researchers discovered that a person’s level of sleep from one night to the next reliably predicted how lonely and sociable they would be feel from one day to the next.
According to Dr. Ben-Simon, “Our findings show that sleep loss acts as a social repellant, in which both sides of the social interaction turn away from each other.” More than 1,350 research participants were analyzed, and this influence was seen at the behavioral, cognitive, and social levels. This study discovered a number of fresh concepts.
- Less social engagement results from getting less sleep. Both complete sleep deprivation and mild nightly losses in sleep cause people to become more antisocial because they reinforce the idea that they are apart from other people.
- Parts of the brain can over- and under-perform as a result of lack of sleep. The brain areas that alert to impending social contact (also known as the “near space network”) are hypersensitive in this antisocial sleep deprivation impact. The “theory of mind network” which ordinarily promotes social engagement and understanding of another person’s intentions, is also compromised.
- People who lack sleep are more likely to be mistaken for lonely by strangers. Independent assessors with no prior awareness of the brain relationship between sleep deprivation and loneliness perceive sleep-deprived participants as being much more lonelier, which has genuine societal significance. The perception of those same participants is less lonely when they are well-rested.
- People who lack sleep do not wish to interact with them. When asked if they would like to collaborate or engage socially with the study participants, the impartial judges were less inclined to do so if the subject was sleep deprived. This reveals how being sleep deprived is a potent social repulsion.
- Lack of sleep can make loneliness contagious. The important finding that the research team made was that sleep deprivation has a contagious antisocial effect. Independent judges reported feeling lonely when they interacted with a person who had not gotten enough sleep. This peculiar result held true even if the judge just spoke with the participant for 60 seconds.
SLEEP & SOCIAL INTERACTION
Our social interactions with others have changed as a result of the pandemic. Many people’s chances of enjoying restful, high-quality sleep have decreased as a result. It is particularly crucial to safeguard our sleep during this period because a lack of sleep can cause loneliness and vice versa.
Dr. Ben-Simon advises that even if we are unable to be physically present with someone, we still need to make the effort to socially connect with them. Even if we have a more flexible schedule now, one piece of advice that can assist conserve sleep is to attempt to maintain the same sleep schedule. We may make sure we obtain the necessary amount of sleep every night by going to bed and waking up at around the same time each day (including weekends).
One could argue that getting the sleep we need prevents us from participating in social activities, like in the case of declining an invitation to a party. We humans were not created to live alone, says Dr. Ben-Simon in his closing statement. In both a biological and psychological sense, sleep serves as the glue that holds our species together. Sleep re-establishes our connections to others in our social network, including acquaintances, spouses, and even complete strangers.
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