When Ebenezer Scrooge awoke on Christmas morning after a restless night, he realized he must abandon his miserly ways.
Unfortunately, the same is not likely to occur for the rest of us, as evidence indicates that sleep deprivation makes people more greedy.
The study, done by scientists in the United States, discovered that losing just one hour of sleep could eliminate people’s motivation to help others, even close relatives. The scientists observed that a terrible night appeared to reduce activity in the region of the brain responsible for promoting social behavior.
Prof. Matthew Walker, the co-author of the study from the University of California, Berkeley, explained, “We discovered that sleep deprivation functions as a trigger for asocial behavior, diminishing individuals’ intrinsic urge to help one another.” In a sense, the less sleep a person gets, the less social and more egocentric they become.
The team suggests in an article published in the journal PLoS Biology that prolonged sleep deprivation may impair social relationships and undermine the altruistic instincts that form society. Walker stated, “Considering the importance of humans in maintaining cooperative, civilized societies, as well as the significant reduction in sleep time over the past 50 years, the implications of these studies, are highly pertinent to how we construct the society in which we aspire to live.”
After a night of sleep, 160 volunteers performed a “self-reported altruism questionnaire” to assess their propensity to assist others. On a scale from “I would stop to help” to “I would ignore them,” participants replied to diverse social circumstances.
In one experiment with 24 volunteers, the researchers compared the responses of the same individual after a night of rest and after 24 hours without sleep. The results indicated a 78% decrease in self-reported willingness to assist others when exhausted.
The researchers next conducted brain scans on the participants and discovered that a short night was associated with decreased activity in the social cognitive brain network, a region involved in social behavior.
According to the study, participants were equally unwilling to assist family and friends as they were strangers. “Lack of sleep diminished the desire to assist others, regardless of whether they were strangers or close family members. In other words, sleep deprivation causes asocial, anti-helping behavior with a broad and indiscriminate influence, according to Walker.
To assess if generosity declines in the actual world, the researchers recorded more than 3 million philanthropic gifts in the United States before and after the clocks were advanced by one hour for daylight saving time, indicating a shorter amount of sleep. They discovered a 10% decline in donations following the switch.
Walker stated, “Our study adds to a growing body of evidence revealing that poor sleep not only hurts an individual’s mental and physical health but also undermines interpersonal relationships and even the altruistic feeling of an entire nation.
We can, thankfully, catch up on sleep. Walker stated, “All of our research indicates that if adequate and sufficient sleep is obtained, the motivation to assist others is regained. However, it is crucial to highlight that sleep time is not the only helpful factor. We discovered that the most significant component was sleep quality, rather than sleep duration,” he noted.
Prof. Russell Foster, director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study, stated, “This is the first study to demonstrate unequivocally that sleep deprivation decreases the propensity for individuals to help one another.
“These findings have significant ramifications for all levels of society, but especially for our night shift, frontline employees,” he said. “Physicians, nurses, and police officers are frequently chronically fatigued, and the findings suggest that their capacity to assist in challenging and demanding situations may be hampered.”
