Longer sleep helps us feel more grateful, resilient and fulfilled.
- Going to bed earlier and thus extending sleep by 46 minutes improves subjective sleepiness and mood disorders.
- In contrast, sleeping later and losing 37 minutes of sleep made them worse.
- Subtly increasing sleep increases gratitude, resilience, and a sense of fulfillment in life.
“People who are grateful, resilient and fulfilled in life are healthier and sleep better. This correlation is usually attributed to personality factors or positive outlooks leading to better sleep,” wrote researchers from Baylor University in Waco (USA) in the introduction to their study published in the journal Sleep. In the latter, they analyzed the reverse causal interpretation: do sleep losses and gains affect feelings and expressions of gratitude, resilience, and flourishing?
Sleeping 46 minutes more improves mood disorders
To answer this question, the team recruited 90 adults who were randomly assigned to three groups. They were either asked to go to bed late, go to bed early, or sleep normally for a work week. This was assessed using actigraphy. The main outcomes considered were changes in feelings of flourishing, resilience, and gratitude, as well as behavioral expression of gratitude (i.e., writing a gratitude list).
The results showed that when participants went to bed earlier, their sleep was extended by an average of 46 minutes per night, which improved subjective sleepiness and mood disturbances. In contrast, when they slept later, which reduced nighttime sleep by an average of 37 minutes, subjective sleepiness and mood disturbances were worsened.
Twice as many words on gratitude list after longer sleep
According to the authors, measures of thriving, resilience, and gratitude improved significantly throughout the week with sleep extension and deteriorated significantly with sleep restriction. Participants who slept longer wrote twice as many words on their gratitude lists as volunteers in the other two conditions. “Most of the effects persist when mood is taken into account.” As a reminder, these positive attitudes are at the heart of well-being and constitute one of the foundations of prosocial behaviors.
