Abstract
Insufficient sleep is a growing public health concern in industrial societies. Although a lack of sleep is known to negatively affect private behaviours—such as working or going to school—comparatively little is known about its consequences for the social behaviours that hold society and democracy together. Using three complementary methods, we show how insufficient sleep affects various measures of civic participation. With survey data from two countries, we show that insufficient sleep predicts lower voter turnout. Next, with a geographical regression discontinuity design, we demonstrate that individuals from the United States who tend to sleep less due to circadian impacts of time-zone boundaries are also less likely to vote. Finally, we experimentally manipulate short-term sleep over a two-stage study. We observe that the treatment decreases the levels of civic engagement, as shown by their willingness to vote, sign petitions and donate to charities. These results highlight the strong negative consequences that current levels of insufficient sleep have on vitally important measures of social capital.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Code availability
The replication code that produced this report is available in the Supplementary Information Appendix. The replication code for the Add Health study cannot be shared as we ‘cannot move files or data in or out of the [computing environment]’ that houses the Add Health data/code (per Duke University’s PRDN data sharing terms).
Data availability
The following restrictions apply to data in studies 1 and 2: the Add Health (restricted) data set used in study 1, the SOEP data in study 1 and the Catalist data used in study 2 are proprietary and cannot be shared by the authors. For information about how to access the Add Health restricted-use data, see www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/documentation/restricteduse. The SOEP data are available after registration with the DIW Berlin, see www.diw.de/en/diw_02.c.222829.en/access.html. Catalist is a subscription-based service; for information about contracting with Catalist, see catalist.us/products/data-subscriptions. The data that support the findings of study 3 are available from the corresponding author on request.
Change history
05 August 2019
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
References
Ford, E. S., Cunningham, T. J. & Croft, J. B. Trends in self-reported sleep duration among US adults from 1985 to 2012. Sleep 38, 829–832 (2015).
Jones, J. M. In U.S., 40% get less than recommended amount of sleep. Gallup (19 December 2013).
Hirshkowitz, M. et al. National Sleep Foundation’s updated sleep recommendations. Sleep Health 1, 233–243 (2015).
Watson, N. F. et al. Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: a joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine & Sleep Research Society. Sleep 38, 843–844 (2015).
NHLBI. Sleep deprivation and deficiency. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/sleep-deprivation-and-deficiency (NIH, 2017).
Hafner, M., Stepanek, M., Taylor, J., Troxel, W. M. & van Stolk, C. Why sleep matters—the economic costs of insufficient sleep: a cross-country comparative analysis. Rand Health Q. 6, 11 (2017).
Pilcher, J. J. & Huffcutt, A. J. Effects of sleep deprivation on performance: a meta-analysis. Sleep 19, 318–326 (1996).
Cappuccio, F. P., D’Elia, L., Strazzullo, P. & Miller, M. A. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sleep 33, 585–592 (2010).
Alhola, P. & Polo-Kantola, P. Sleep deprivation: impact on cognitive performance. Neuropsychiatr. Dis. Treat. 3, 553–567 (2007).
Gu, F. et al. Longitude position in a time zone and cancer risk in the United States. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 26, 1306–1311 (2017).
Jauhar, P. & Weller, M. P. Psychiatric morbidity and time zone changes: a study of patients from heathrow airport. Br. J. Psychiatry 140, 231–235 (1982).
National Sleep Foundation introduces model legislation to advance drowsy driving prevention. National Sleep Foundation https://www.sleepfoundation.org/press-release/national-sleep-foundation-introduces-model-legislation-advance-drowsy-driving (2014).
Peaslee, S. Sleep deprivation is a national crisis. Huffington Post (21 March 2016).
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2017. The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2017/press-release/ (2017).
Asken, M. J. & Raham, D. C. Resident performance and sleep deprivation: a review. J. Med. Educ. 58, 382–388 (1983).
Giuntella, O. & Mazzonna, F. If You Don’t Snooze You Lose Health and Gain Weight: Evidence From a Regression Discontinuity Design (IZA, 2015).
Li, S. et al. Sleep, school performance, and a school-based intervention among school-aged children: a sleep series study in China. PLoS One 8, e67928 (2013).
Lim, J. & Dinges, D. F. A meta-analysis of the impact of short-term sleep deprivation on cognitive variables. Psychol. Bull. 136, 375–389 (2010).
Mullington, J. M., Haack, M., Toth, M., Serrador, J. M. & Meier-Ewert, H. K. Cardiovascular, inflammatory, and metabolic consequences of sleep deprivation. Prog. Cardiovasc. Dis. 51, 294–302 (2009).
Harrison, Y. & Horne, J. A. The impact of sleep deprivation on decision making: a review. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 6, 236–249 (2000).
Heissel, J. & Norris, S. Rise and shine: the effect of school start times on academic performance from childhood through puberty. J. Hum. Resour. https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.53.4.0815-7346R1 (2017).
Philip, P., Taillard, J., Quera-Salva, M. A., Bioulac, B. & Åkerstedt, T. Simple reaction time, duration of driving and sleep deprivation in young versus old automobile drivers. J. Sleep Res. 8, 9–14 (1999).
Aldrich, M. S. Automobile accidents in patients with sleep disorders. Sleep 12, 487–494 (1989).
Philip, P. et al. Long distance driving and self-induced sleep deprivation among automobile drivers. Sleep 22, 475–480 (1999).
Putnam, R. D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001).
La Porta, R., Lopez-De-Silane, F., Shleifer, A. & Vishny, R. W. Trust in large organizations. Am. Econ. Rev. 87, 333–338 (1997).
Burden, B. C., Fletcher, J. M., Herd, P., Moynihan, D. P. & Jones, B. M. How different forms of health matter to political participation. J. Polit. 79, 166–178 (2017).
Holbein, J. B. Childhood skill development and adult political participation. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 111, 572–583 (2017).
Moore, P. J., Adler, N. E., Williams, D. R. & Jackson, J. S. Socioeconomic status and health: the role of sleep. Psychosom. Med. 64, 337–344 (2002).
Knack, S. & Keefer, P. Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation. Q. J. Econ. 112, 1251–1288 (1997).
Gibson, M. & Shrader, J. Time Use and Productivity: the Wage Returns to Sleep No. 2015-17 (Department of Econmics, Williams College, 2015).
Verba, S., Schlozman, K. L. & Brady, H. E. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1995).
Giuntella, O., Han, W. & Mazzonna, F. Circadian rhythms, sleep and cognitive skills: evidence from an unsleeping giant. Demography 54, 1715–1742 (2017).
Anderson, C. & Platten, C. R. Sleep deprivation lowers inhibition and enhances impulsivity to negative stimuli. Behav. Brain Res. 217, 463–466 (2011).
Anderson, C. & Dickinson, D. L. Bargaining and trust: the effects of 36-h total sleep deprivation on socially interactive decisions. J. Sleep Res. 19, 54–63 (2010).
Horne, J. A. Human sleep, sleep loss and behaviour: implications for the prefrontal cortex and psychiatric disorder. Br. J. Psychiatry 162, 413–419 (1993).
Muzur, A., Pace-Schott, E. F. & Hobson, J. A. The prefrontal cortex in sleep. Trends Cogn. Sci. 6, 475–481 (2002).
Chee, M. W. L. & Chuah, L. Y. M. Functional neuroimaging insights into how sleep and sleep deprivation affect memory and cognition. Curr. Opin. Neurol. 21, 417–423 (2008).
Rilling, J. K. & Sanfey, A. G. The neuroscience of social decision-making. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 62, 23–48 (2011).
Krajbich, I., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Denburg, N. L. & Camerer, C. F. Economic games quantify diminished sense of guilt in patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex. J. Neurosci. 29, 2188–2192 (2009).
McCabe, K., Houser, D., Ryan, L., Smith, V. & Trouard, T. A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 98, 11832–11835 (2001).
Fehr, E. & Camerer, C. F. Social neuroeconomics: the neural circuitry of social preferences. Trends Cogn. Sci. 11, 419–427 (2007).
Dickinson, D. L. & McElroy, T. Sleep restriction and circadian effects on social decisions. Eur. Econ. Rev. 97, 57–71 (2017).
Clark, J. & Dickinson, D. L. The Impact of Sleep Restriction on Contributions and Punishment: First Evidence (IZA, 2017).
Schafer, J. P. & Holbein, J. B. When time is of the essence: a natural experiment on how time constraints influence elections. J. Polit. (in the press).
Leighley, J. E. & Nagler, J. Who Votes Now?: Demographics, Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 2013).
Hamidovic, A. & de Wit, H. Sleep deprivation increases cigarette smoking. Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav. 93, 263–269 (2009).
Tazawa, Y. & Okada, K. Physical signs associated with excessive television-game playing and sleep deprivation. Pediatr. Int. 43, 647–650 (2001).
Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T. & Gosling, S. D. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: a new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 6, 3–5 (2011).
Paolacci, G., Chandler, J. & Ipeirotis, P. G. Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgm. Decis. Mak. 5, 411–419 (2010).
Dickinson, D. L., Drummond, S. P. A. & McElroy, T. The viability of an ecologically valid chronic sleep restriction and circadian timing protocol: an examination of sample attrition, compliance, and effectiveness at impacting sleepiness and mood. PLoS One 12, e0174367 (2017).
Green, D. P., Ha, S. E. & Bullock, J. G. Enough already about black box experiments: studying mediation is more difficult than most scholars suppose. Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci. 628, 200–208 (2010).
Omisade, A., Buxton, O. M. & Rusak, B. Impact of acute sleep restriction on cortisol and leptin levels in young women. Physiol. Behav. 99, 651–656 (2010).
Spaeth, A. M., Dinges, D. F. & Goel, N. Effects of experimental sleep restriction on weight gain, caloric intake, and meal timing in healthy adults. Sleep 36, 981–990 (2013).
Hiscock, H. & Wake, M. Randomised controlled trial of behavioural infant sleep intervention to improve infant sleep and maternal mood. BMJ 324, 1062–1065 (2002).
Viola, A. U., James, L. M., Schlangen, L. J. M. & Dijk, D.-J. Blue-enriched white light in the workplace improves self-reported alertness, performance and sleep quality. Scand. J. Work Environ. Health 34, 297–306 (2008).
Acknowledgements
J.B.H. thanks the NSF for its support (no. SES-1657821). J.P.S. thanks the Yale CSAP. We are also grateful for the helpful feedback from V. Arceneaux, P. Aronow, E. Busby, J. Clinton, R. Enos, B. Fraga, A. Gerber, S. Hill, G. Huber, J. Kalla, L. Keele, M. Kryger, T. Mendelberg, M. Meredith, D. Mutz, J. Nagler, S. Nuamah, D. Rand, M. Rangel, R. Tituinik and audiences at the APSA/MPSA meetings and at Princeton, Yale and BYU. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
J.B.H. and J.P.S. contributed to the observational, natural experimental and experimental analyses and write-up. D.L.D. contributed to the experimental design, analysis and write-up.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information
Supplementary Notes, Supplementary Figures 1–6, and Supplementary References.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Holbein, J.B., Schafer, J.P. & Dickinson, D.L. Insufficient sleep reduces voting and other prosocial behaviours. Nat Hum Behav 3, 492–500 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0543-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0543-4
This article is cited by
-
Association between cigarette smoking status and voting intentions: Cross sectional surveys in England 2015-2020
BMC Public Health (2021)
-
The effects of seasons and weather on sleep patterns measured through longitudinal multimodal sensing
npj Digital Medicine (2021)
-
Well-Slept Children and Teens are Happier and More Hopeful with Fewer Emotional Problems
Child Indicators Research (2021)