A new study reveals this: a poor quality of sleep significantly influences our ability to cope with frustrating situations.
(Giovanni D'Agata) It happens to wonder why some days we feel more irritable. One of the reasons is the lack of sleep, which would prevent people to deal with the most complicated situations effectively, abandoning themselves to anger. In fact, everyone knows that not sleeping enough hurts. It goes to the mood, physical health and also mental health, as well as our performance at work and in social life. But not all of us imagine that, even with just two hours of sleep less, in the long run our ability to handle stressful situations is greatly reduced, triggering in us strong feelings of anger and tension. Researcher Zlatan Krizan, a professor of psychology, and his team at Iowa State University have in fact conducted an experiment in which they tried to subject poorly rested individuals to stressful situations.
Although the link between fatigue and irritability may seem intuitive and natural, the one conducted by the US team is one of the first studies that shows a clear connection between poor sleep and the rise of rabies. In particular, researchers have looked at the capacity that leads people to adapt in everyday situations to unexpected situations or unfavorable conditions. "Although there is a common tendency to get used to a condition of irritation, for example caused by an uncomfortable shirt or a barking dog, individuals who do not sleep sufficiently show a tendency to a state of anger and very strong stress, which essentially overturns their ability to adapt, over time, to frustrating conditions, "said Dr. Krizan. The participants were divided into two groups: the first slept normally, 7 hours per night, keep the sleep cycle unaltered, while the second could rest for about two hours less, for two nights in a row.
The sleep of the volunteers was manipulated, before and after, and monitored in association with different types of sounds: brown noise (or brownish noise), similar to that of a stream, and white noise, similar to that of a static signal . The participants who had less sleep hours during the day were more in difficulty in adapting to a stressful situation, and the noises in them tended to arouse a stronger sense of anger. "In general, anger was substantially more for people who had slept less," adds Dr. Krizan. "We manipulated the sounds so that they were more or less annoying and during the experiment, as expected, the participants showed more anger when the noise was more irritating. But when they had not slept enough, the level of anger was greater regardless of the type of noise. "
A sleep deficiency normally elicits a variety of negative emotions, such as anxiety and sadness, but its impact on rabies is, according to the study leader, one of a kind. To further confirm what was observed, the researchers are analyzing data from 200 university students who have kept a diary of their sleep for a month. According to initial results, the boys would have realized that they felt more angry than normal in the days when they did not sleep much. The research, highlights Giovanni D'Agata, president of the "Rights Window, was published in full in the scientific journal Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
