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A team of Swedish researchers has investigated the links between social interactions and sleep. Fatigue and drowsiness would thus have a real impact on our need for socialization.
It is a fact that a lack of sleep has a negative impact on health. But do you know that it also influences our behavior? Tired, we would be less inclined to have social interactions. In a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Swedish researchers from the Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University say that lack of sleep may affect our socialization.
70% less social interactions with lack of sleep
The researchers studied 641 participants, all professionally active. Each of them had to keep a log of their daily habits detailing their drowsiness during the day, but also their social activities for three weeks. The results of the study showed that sleep significantly influences social interactions, and that sleepiness and socialization are affected depending on the time of day.
Thus, having more social activities in the late morning or early afternoon would tend to make you sleepy. But surprisingly, evening socialization reduces drowsiness and shortens the night's sleep. The study shows that the desire to sleep generally induces a decrease in social interactions, since social activities can be reduced by 70% when you are sleepy.
One should be careful with daytime sleepiness, they warn, because it is dangerous, since beyond reducing social interactions, it drastically increases the risk of dementia.