Insufficient sleep is a health concern, and its effects reach beyond physical health. While a lack of sleep is known to negatively impact some types of behaviors, relatively little is known about how it impacts civic engagement and social behaviors vital for a healthy democracy.
Research from Appalachian State University professor of economics David Dickinson has newly explored the effects of sleep -- or lack thereof -- on prosocial behavior. Led by Dickinson and co-authors/political scientists John Holbein (Brigham Young University) and Jerome Schafer (Ludwig-Maximilians University), the study found that insufficient sleep predicts lower voter turnout and that those manipulated to short term increased sleepiness are less willing to vote, sign petitions and donate to charities.
“The advantage of this paper is that we not only examined real-world expressions of prosocial behaviors and civic engagement, which connects more directly with real-world decision makers, but we also used multiple methodologies to show a consistent result," said Dickinson. "Each different data set and methodology has its strengths and weaknesses, but the result is all the more compelling when all point to the same conclusion.”
The authors' findings highlight that there likely exists significant negative consequences of current societal sleep habits on civic engagement and important measures of social capital that have spillover effects in society. Learn more about the findings and methodologies in the paper, Insufficient sleep reduces voting and other prosocial behaviours, which was recently published in Nature Human Behaviour.
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Economics professor's research suggests lack of sleep reduces voter turnout
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