Glossary // Glossary term Empirical

Sleep deprivation

In research, the experimental removal of sleep, usually a full night without sleep, distinguished from partial sleep restriction and from sleep fragmentation by repeated awakenings. Meta-analyses of such experiments in healthy people find reduced positive affect and increased anxiety, with mixed effects on negative affect and emotional reactivity. It differs from insomnia, a persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep.

Where the site uses it

Sleep and emotion regulation: what experiments on sleep loss show
Experimental sleep loss reduces positive affect and increases anxiety, and poor sleep is associated with later depression. This note reviews the meta-analyses, what they say about emotion regulation, and why sleep matters after an emotional strain.
Protect your sleep after an emotional strain instead of processing it all night
Experimental sleep loss reduces positive affect, increases anxiety and lowers the threshold for stress. After a difficult day, keeping your usual sleep preserves the capacity to regulate and decide the next day.

Studies behind it

The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at.

Palmer, C. A., Bower, J. L., Cho, K. W., Clementi, M. A., Lau, S., Oosterhoff, B., & Alfano, C. A. (2024). Sleep loss and emotion: A systematic review and meta-analysis of over 50 years of experimental research. doi:10.1037/bul0000410

Level A Meta-analysis

Supports the claims that all forms of experimental sleep loss reduced positive affect, increased anxiety symptoms and blunted arousal in response to emotional stimuli, while findings for negative affect and depressive symptoms were mixed. Preregistered; acute laboratory sleep loss in healthy samples.
Tomaso, C. C., Johnson, A. B., & Nelson, T. D. (2021). The effect of sleep deprivation and restriction on mood, emotion, and emotion regulation: Three meta-analyses in one. doi:10.1093/sleep/zsaa289

Level A Meta-analysis

Supports the claims that sleep loss increased negative mood (g = 0.45), decreased positive mood (g = -0.94) and had a small negative effect on adaptive emotion regulation (g = -0.32), with no significant effect on maladaptive regulation. The regulation findings came from youth samples only.
Minkel, J. D., Banks, S., Htaik, O., Moreta, M. C., Jones, C. W., McGlinchey, E. L., Simpson, N. S., & Dinges, D. F. (2012). Sleep deprivation and stressors: Evidence for elevated negative affect in response to mild stressors when sleep deprived. doi:10.1037/a0026871

Level B Experiment

Supports the claim that sleep-deprived participants reported more stress, anxiety and anger than rested controls after a low-stress task but not after a high-stress task, consistent with a lowered threshold for perceiving stress. Small samples and one night of total deprivation.