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Sleep loss does not impact ability to assess emotional information
Significance
- Sleep loss impacts mood but doesn’t affect emotional assessment.
- New research reveals insomnia doesn’t hinder emotional state evaluation.
- Insomnia alters mood yet preserves emotional judgment abilities.
- Despite sleep loss, assessing emotions remains intact, studies show.
- Research finds insomnia disrupts mood, not emotional assessment skills.
It is no secret that sleep loss or insomnia can affect a person’s mood. But new research shows that it does not impair their ability to assess emotional states.
Impact of Sleep Loss on Emotional Control in High-Stress Professions
The study results are impacting health care providers, law enforcement and people in other long-term jobs. Those who need to be able to control their emotions during stressful and emotionally stressful situations. Loss of sleep is unlikely to cause emotional numbness, researchers have found. But it may also prevent them from controlling their emotional responses.
The researchers recruited 60 adult participants for the study. They spent four consecutive days at the Sleep and Work Research Center at WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. Participants slept normally on the first night and completed basic tests to assess their mood, emotional control, and processing skills. Then, the researchers divided the participants into two groups: one group of 40 people spent the second night awake, while the control group of 20 participants were allowed normal sleep time.
Emotional control and processing tests both involve looking at a series of images with positive and negative meanings of emotions. The sleep-deprived group had a great deal of difficulty in controlling their emotions when instructed to do so.
The processing tests involved responding to words and pictures with emotional content, for example measuring the emotions conveyed by a smiling family, a barking dog or a crying baby. All participants did the same in these tests whether they slept or not.
Distinguishing between processing emotional content and controlling emotional responses is crucial, especially in high-stress professions. This differentiation helps ensure effective management of emotions and maintains performance under pressure.
Research reveals that excessive control can disrupt “hot” or emotional perception processes, indicating that managing emotions intensely might impair how we perceive and respond to emotional information.
References
Image: IStock
Contact: Anthony R. Stenson
Source: PLOS ONE
