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Sleep, Emotions, and Sense of Belonging: A Daily Experience Study

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Abstract

Sleep has strong influences on affective and social experiences. However, less is known about the reciprocal effects of sleep, affect, and social experiences at a daily level, and little work has considered racial/ethnic minorities at high risk for social disconnection and discrimination. A 7-day daily experience study assessed the bidirectional relationships between daily sleep quality, affect, social experiences, and overall well-being among a sample of Latinx undergraduates (N = 109). Each morning, participants reported on their previous night's sleep. Each evening, they reported their positive and negative affect, experiences of belonging and unfair treatment, and overall well-being that day. Results indicate that, at a daily level, sleep quality predicts next-day affect, belonging, and well-being. Reciprocally, only daily well-being predicts sleep quality. Findings highlight sleep as a potentially powerful antecedent of affective and social experiences likely to be particularly potent for underrepresented minority groups.

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Notes

  1. We also measured daytime dysfunction by assessing tiredness/fatigue in each PM diary. However, because this item was assessed at the same time as our emotion and belonging variables, we felt it was more conservative to maintain the temporal distance between our key variables and thus chose to not include it in our sleep score.

  2. The number of cases for this set of analyses is reduced (Ndays = 540) because there is a maximum of 6 days in which the PM diary can predict the next day’s AM diary.

  3. To explore whether unfair treatment was related to daytime functioning, as shown in prior work, we computed the within-person correlation between unfair treatment and tiredness/fatigue (both assessed in the PM diary). We found that on days when people experienced unfair treatment, they felt more tired and fatigued (r = .11, p = .01). Although we cannot determine directionality, this finding is consistent with Yip, Cheon, et al., (2020) and suggests an important link between unfair treatment and daytime dysfunction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106-9660, USA

    Paige E. Harris, Payton A. Small, Nancy L. Collins & Brenda Major

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Amie M. Gordon

  3. Department of Psychology, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    Tessa L. Dover

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  1. Paige E. Harris
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  2. Amie M. Gordon
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  3. Tessa L. Dover
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  4. Payton A. Small
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  5. Nancy L. Collins
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  6. Brenda Major
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Correspondence to Paige E. Harris.

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Funding

This research was supported by a Russell Sage Grant (RSF #96–18-02) to Brenda Major and Tessa L Dover and a UC Health Psychology Consortium Grant to Brenda Major and Aric Prather.

Availability of Data and Material

Study materials, data, and data analytic code are stored on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/bkn79/?view_only=a20109b89881452eacda3ac1b7070731) and can be accessed with author permission (email corresponding author).

Ethics Approval

Approval was obtained from the Human Subjects Committee of the University of California, Santa Barbara. All procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Not applicable.

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Handling Editor: Aric Prather

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Harris, P.E., Gordon, A.M., Dover, T.L. et al. Sleep, Emotions, and Sense of Belonging: A Daily Experience Study. Affec Sci 3, 295–306 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00088-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00088-0

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