Abstract Introduction Poor sleep predicts the onset and maintenance of mental health difficulties, which may be due to the impact of sleep on emotional experiences. Results suggest that disrupted sleep increases negative and decreases positive emotions. Further, sleep difficulties also impair social interactions, but little is known about the relationship between sleep and social emotions, and how individual differences such as trait anxiety may exacerbate these associations. Methods Participants included 168 adults (72% female), with a final analytic sample of 115. Participants completed an intake where they completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, followed by two weeks of actigraphy. Participants completed nightly surveys about their socially-oriented emotional experiences each day, including feelings of Positive Resonance (PR; e.g., reports of shared positive affect and feeling ‘in sync’ with others; Fredrickson, 2016), along with specific social emotions, including positive connectedness (e.g., gratitude, love), interpersonal aggression (e.g., hostility), jealousy, self-consciousness (e.g., embarrassed, awkward), and social exclusion (e.g., ignored, excluded). Results Later bedtimes were associated with more interpersonal aggression, r(112) = .20, p = ..04. Greater WASO was related to less PR, r(115) = -.18, p .05. Longer SOL was also related to less PR, r(78) = -.28, p = .014, and less positive connectedness, r(78) = -.22, p .05. . Ttrait anxiety was associated with all of the social emotions (less PR and connectedness, greater interpersonal aggression, jealousy, self-consciousness, and social exclusion; all p’s .001) and to a later average bedtime, r(114) = .25, p = .007. However, anxiety did not moderate any of the associations between sleep and social emotions. Conclusion This study expands prior research by examining how sleep relates to positive and negative emotions in social contexts. Later bedtimes were associated with daily experiences of interpersonal aggression, such as feelings of hostility or annoyance toward others. Difficulties falling asleep and staying asleep were associated with fewer daily positive social experiences, but not with negative social emotions. These findings were robust regardless of trait levels of anxiety. Support (if any)
Steinberg et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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