The Association of Gender with Social Behavior Following Decreased Sleep: An Interpersonal Salience Hypothesis

While there has been a wealth of literature on the physical effects of decreased sleep and its status as a risk factor for negative outcomes across a variety of domains, there has been a dearth of literature on its effect on social functioning. (Buxton & Marcelli, 2010; Buysse, 2014; Greene, Gregory, Fone, & White, 2015). Saré and colleagues (2016) found that sleep restriction is associated with an increase in social orientation in female mice, but a decrease in sociality in male mice. In our study, we tested whether participants showed similar patterns of sociality under conditions of poor sleep. We also explored whether depression moderated the association between sleep and various social behaviors. Individuals participated in a larger two-week study on stress mindsets in which they completed daily surveys in order to assess sleep quality, prosocial, social needs, and social bonding behaviors. An actigraphy watch was used to record daily total sleep time and sleep debt. We found that women with shorter total sleep time and greater sleep debt showed increased prosocial behavior, while men showed decreased prosocial behavior. We also found the relationship between sleep and social functioning to be moderated by depressive symptoms. Participants with higher depressive symptoms showed increases in prosocial behavior, social needs, and social bonding as total sleep time decreased. Increases in social needs and social bonding were also observed as sleep debt increased. Overall, we found novel information on how gender and depression are associated with the relationship between sleep and social behaviors.