Friday, September 6, 2013

How is your sleep affecting your relationship?

For the first few years of college, I maintained the typical college-student sleep schedule: in bed between 2am and 3am, dragging myself up at 9am for my 9:30am lecture which I inevitably slept through (in the front row… what was I thinking?!?). Chronically sleep-deprived, I would rather be spending time with my new friends and boyfriend than catching those precious zzz’s. Many of those nights made for wonderful memories, but other times I’d find myself inexplicably upset over some small issue, picking fights with my boyfriend (now husband) in the wee hours of the night. “You’re tired, go to bed” my wise boyfriend would tell me. “No I’m not! This is a real issue!” sleepy me would argue back, frustrated at his disregard, not understanding why he didn’t get what I was feeling.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I will publicly state that my husband was right – 99% of the time I was just tired and a good night of sleep made all of my problems go away. Happily, I eventually learned the benefits of getting my requisite 9 hours of sleep, and rarely find myself picking fights in the middle of the night. And now, 10 years later, I’m putting this anecdote to the test – conducting research to answer the question of whether we might, at times, find ourselves in conflict simply because one of us is tired.

Poor Sleep: A route to unnecessary conflict?

Conflict is an important, inevitable, and healthy component of relationships. Romantic partners who are sharing their lives together are expectedly going to have times of disagreement. In fact, being able to express differences of opinion and find compromise may very well be the hallmark of a healthy relationship. However, conflict is not always helpful and even at its best, is generally unpleasant. Minimizing unnecessary squabbles is vital for the longevity of relationships. And here is where I think sleep comes in. People who are sleep deprived tend to experience more negative emotions (see this post for more on sleep and mood), are more reactive to negative events, and are worse at problem solving. A recipe for disaster – whereas someone who is well-rested might be able to clarify when they think they’ve been criticized, or simply shrug off a sink of dirty dishes, someone who is sleep-deprived is more likely to be a ticking time bomb, possibly reacting automatically without the capacity to stop and think it through.

In our research, we examined the link between sleep and conflict, testing three main questions:

After sleeping poorly…
1.       Are people more likely to report experiencing conflict with their relationship partners?
2.       Is their conflict more severe?
3.       Are they less able to resolve conflict?

The short answer is Yes. A bad night of sleep is associated with more frequent, severe and less resolved conflict between relationship partners. But read on for the longer explanation…

After sleeping poorly, are people more likely to fight with their relationship partners?
To answer this question we had participants complete a daily survey for two weeks. Each morning when they woke up they recorded how well and how long they’d slept the previous night. Each night before going to bed they told us whether, and how much, they had fought with their partner that day. The bottom line: the worse people slept the night before, the more they reported fighting with their partner that day.

But is it really that people fight more after a bad night of sleep? Perhaps these people were stressed, anxious or depressed and thus not sleeping well and fighting with their partner (that pesky “third variable” problem). We tested for this and found that the association between sleep and conflict wasn’t due to people being more stressed out, anxious or depressed. Another possibility is that couples disturb each other in the night, so they wake up cranky after not sleeping well and their partner is to blame, creating a situation ripe for conflict. We tested this too – participants did report that their partner disturbed their sleep. But it was the lack of sleep, and not the fact that the partner caused it, that was associated with greater conflict the following day.

After sleeping poorly, is conflict more severe?
To answer our second question, we conducted a second study. We had couples come into our laboratory and spend five minutes talking about a problem in their relationship while we videotaped the conversation. How did sleep influence this conversation? People who reported sleeping poorly the previous night experienced fewer positive emotions and more negative emotions and were less able to take their partner’s perspective during the conversation, both of which are harmful to the well-being and longevity of the relationship.
We also looked at whether people were affected by their partner’s sleep. It turns out that whether or not you sleep well, if your partner doesn’t sleep well you also experience fewer positive emotions, more negative emotions and are less able to perspective take. So when it comes to dealing with conflict – if either partner doesn’t get a good night sleep, both partners are affected.

After sleeping poorly, are couples less able to resolve conflict?
After their five minute conversation was over, we had each partner in the couple tell us how well they’d resolved the problem they’d just discussed. Participants were most likely to report resolving the conflict when both partners were well-rested. If either partner had slept poorly the previous night, the fight was less likely to be resolved. So once again, we found that when it comes to conflict resolution, it takes two - just one poorly-rested partner is enough to derail conflict resolution.

What do we mean by “poor sleep”?
If poor sleep is associated with negative outcomes, it is important for us to clarify what exactly we mean by poor sleep! To obtain a measure of “poor sleep” we assess several facets of sleep, including quantity (how long you sleep), quality (how well you sleep), disruptions (how many times you wake up during the night), sleep latency (how long it takes you to fall asleep), and daytime dysfunction (how tired you feel the next day). We add all of these different pieces together to get a total picture of the night of sleep. We don’t find that any one aspect of sleep is primarily associated with conflict, it is the total sleep picture.

The Bottom Line: If you find yourself more reactive than usual, think about whether you or your partner had a bad night of sleep. We don’t know yet whether these findings are causal, but it is worth considering that catching a few ZZZ’s might solve more problems than you’d think.

Want to know more about sleep? Check out the previous three posts in this series, examining whether you're getting enough sleep, revealing the secrets behind the sleep cycle, and linking sleep to mood.

The Article:
Gordon, A. M., & Chen, S. (2013). The role of sleep in interpersonal conflict: Do sleepless nights mean worse fights? Social Psychological and Personality Science, Online First DOI: 10.1177/1948550613488952

15 comments:

  1. I personally thought that this survey was put together very well. When I heard what was getting tested I thought that you were going to multiple third variables but once it was acounted for AND tested by the use of a survey and a correlational study I knew this study was legitimate. I'm glad that you defined what your opinion was of "poor sleep." The study was also on a topic very relevant to me as I had also wondered what the effects of poor sleep has on our everyday lives. I also found it interesting that if only one of the partners had a bad sleep experience then both of the members were effected. Overall I thought this study was done very well, the only thing I would've done differently was widen my test subjects a little more such as getting couples in their twenties thirties and fourties to measure the correlation between their attitudes. Love the study.

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    1. We are actually seeking funds to test these effects on a wider sample, including middle-aged couples. We're looking forward to seeing if the results are the same across the lifespan!

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  2. I thought that this blog was pretty much right on. I agree that people who don't get the necessary sleep feel affected in their relationship, education, or job. In fact, a study says that 43% of Americans feel that they aren't getting the necessary sleep that they want. They said that the result of their poor feeling was because they were waking up in the middle of the night, waking up too early, or just not feeling fully refreshed when they wake up. 65% of Americans say that eight hours isn't necessarily what they need. They think that about seven and a half hours would do just fine. So I think that the blog is spot on and shows that Americans and any for that matter need way more sleep.

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    1. As someone who needs 9+ hours per night, I'm horrified by the expectations of our society - sometimes it feels like the only way to get ahead is to sleep fewer hours. I wonder if this has always been a problem or if people got more sleep before we had technology to keep us up late into the night.

      Thanks for reading!
      Amie

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  3. For the most part, this blog was very well-written. They formed a hypothesis, conducted multiple experiments, and formed a conclusion based off of those results. This showed a clear understanding of the scientific method. They showed comparisons of the conflict-solving skills of sleep-deprived couples versus well-rested couples, and showed clear results that well-rested couples were better at resolving conflicts than sleep-deprived couples. But, I do still have a few questions about the experiment. How were these couples selected? How random was it? They also never gave the state of the relationships before the study was conducted; maybe the well-rested couples had better relationships before the study than the other couples. Or maybe the sleep-deprived couples had personality types that were more prone to conflict prior to the experiment. also, it does not give the strength of the correlation between sleep-deprivation and conflict in relationships. Is it 100% guaranteed that if someone in a couple has less than 8 or 9 hours of sleep they will not have the ability to deal with conflict? or is it just an increased likelihood that sleep-deprived couples might have more conflict? Overall it was a good blog, but those were just a few questions I had

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    1. The samples were a convenience sample from UC Berkeley and the surrounding commmunity. You bring up an important point though - it might be that couples who are less satisfied tend to sleep worse and fight more. We actually tested this and found that our effects could not be explained by couples' relationship satisfaction, suggesting it is not something about the state of the relationship, but something due to not sleeping well.

      However, it is definitely not a guarantee that people who sleep worse will fight more, it is just that, ON AVERAGE, there is a relationship between sleep and conflict such that worse sleep is associated with more frequent and severe conflict. For some people, this may not be the case... a question we are actually testing right now!

      Thanks for reading,
      Amie

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  4. There are various ideas discussed in this article that relate to psychology and I think you have enough evidence that this study seems accurate. When it is said that when one partner doesn’t sleep well, the other doesn’t sleep well either, that to me sounds a lot like Social Psychology. The partner clearly affects the other’s social life and makes them unpleasant, so now they’re both unpleasant which leads to the fighting. I think this also has a bit of Cognitive Psychology because when one is sleep deprived, their mental processing is weak and they can’t think as properly as say a person who’s had 7-8 hours of sleep and so weak mental processing can also lead to having conflict with their partner due to impatience, bad mood, etc. I would think your hypothesis went something like, “If a person is sleep deprived, then the other people around them, i.e. a loved one, are likely to experience conflict with said person” which would have led to show the statistics on the study were true. I think these two things, sleep deprivation and conflict between two partners have a positive correlation because it is obvious that the more a person is lacking sleep, the more the relationship will have problems. As those things increase, the conflict will get worse and if those factors decrease, the couple will find more peace in their relationship.

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  5. Personally, I enjoyed this blog very much. It goes over social psychology and your sense of self. At the beginning you were explaining your sleep schedule while in college and how you and your boy friend would always fight due to the lack of sleep you had gotten the night before, and I felt as if you were explaining my life. When you talk about the lack of sleep and the fights it causes you're not using explicit cognition. I now have an attribution to why my boyfriend acts the way he does. But when you say each relationship works out better when you go through fights, I can understand because who would want a boring relationship. You displayed true altruism.

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  7. I thought this blog was very interesting. They conducted a well thought-out experiment using the scientific method. They wanted to know if the nights sleep caused arguments with their partner and formed a hypothesis. During the experiment they used a survey to give to the participants to observe their night sleep. They also examined the two variables to see how they were related with using the correlation study. After they collected all the data they drew conclusions and reported their findings. This experiment also included personality psychology because they studied how the characteristics, such as lack of sleep, developed causing more arguments between the couples. It also helps individuals understand that they are all different and to avoid arguments some couples may need more sleep than others. It was a very good experiment!

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    1. Thanks for your comment Emily S. Glad you liked it!

      Amie

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  8. I thought that this experiment was very interesting and very well tested! There is a very strong positive correlation between the amount of sleep a couple gets, and the amount of arguing and disagreeing that is occurring. Social influence really stood out to me while reading this because when our partner does not sleep well it not only affects the amount of arguing that will occur the next day, but as well as the amount of sleep we will get as well. and having two people sleep deprived and moody will lead to a lot of disagreements and arguing. It seems social cognition also plays a huge part in this because if we did not get a good night sleep the night before we might take what our partner says the wrong way and start an argument or make them become upset as well. I found this article very interesting! It also makes me want to sleep in a separate room than my partner and avoid the mess!

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  9. I agree with this that less sleep can cause more arguments in relationships. In my SCCC class, we discovered how to get better sleep by creating a sleep routine to do every night before you go to bed. Make it last around 20 minutes to give your body time to wind down and do the same thing every night at the same times. After doing this for a week or so, you will find yourself getting deeper and more satisfying sleep. This will reduce the amount of arguments in the mornings.

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  10. I agree with this that less sleep can cause more arguments in relationships. In my SCCC class, we discovered how to get better sleep by creating a sleep routine to do every night before you go to bed. Make it last around 20 minutes to give your body time to wind down and do the same thing every night at the same times. After doing this for a week or so, you will find yourself getting deeper and more satisfying sleep. This will reduce the amount of arguments in the mornings.

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  11. i really like the content of this blog. feeling amazed to see such kind of stuff.
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    ReplyDelete