Sleep loss causes social withdrawal and loneliness.
Level 2 - randomized trial
Experimental human laboratory study testing causal effects of sleep deprivation on behavioral and neural measures.
PubMed 30108218 · doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05377-0
What was done
The authors investigated whether sleep loss causally triggers loneliness by testing for a neural and behavioral phenotype of social withdrawal following sleep deprivation, and assessing how observers perceive and respond to sleep-deprived individuals.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative data, sample sizes, or effect sizes. It qualitatively reports that sleep loss causes social withdrawal and loneliness, makes affected individuals appear less socially appealing to others, and reciprocally increases loneliness in observing individuals.
Why it matters
The paper proposes a direct causal mechanism linking sleep loss to social isolation and loneliness, framing it as a propagating cycle with public health implications.
Limits
The abstract reports no sample size, participant demographics, quantitative effect estimates, or specific experimental protocols. Whether these laboratory findings generalize to chronic partial sleep restriction in naturalistic settings cannot be determined from the abstract alone.
Cited by
- supports Sleep deprivation increases an individual's preferred interpersonal physical distance relative to when fully rested.
- supports Sleep deprivation causes hyperactivity in the parietal and premotor near-space brain network while shutting down activity in the theory of mind network.
- supports Uninformed observers reliably rate sleep-deprived individuals as appearing lonelier and report lower willingness to socially interact or work with them.
- supports Viewing a 60-second video clip of a sleep-deprived person causes observers themselves to feel lonelier.
- supports Night-to-night reductions in sleep duration of tens of minutes significantly predict how lonely an individual feels the following day.