Lack of sleep impairs moral judgment, new study finds

DALLAS - SLEEPING for less than seven hours a night is not only bad for one's health, it also hampers one's ability to make decisions that affect the lives and safety of others, according to new research.

Scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that sleep deprivation impairs the ability to integrate emotion and cognition to guide moral judgments.

Their findings, published on Thursday in the journal Sleep, may have implications for those in occupations that frequently require periods of extended sleep loss and in which real-world moral dilemmas may be encountered, such as emergency medical services, soldiers in combat and firefighters.

'When sleep-deprived, individuals appear to be selectively slower in their deliberations about moral personal dilemmas relative to other types of dilemmas,' Dr William Killgore at Walter Reed, in Silver Spring, Maryland, said in the study.

Dr Killgore and his colleagues tested 26 healthy active-duty men and women on the 'appropriateness' of various courses of action in response to three types of moral dilemmas.

Respondents were questioned when rested and again following 53 hours of continuous wakefulness.

Respondents took longer and had greater difficulty deciding on a response after being deprived of sleep, the authors found.

The finding supports the hypothesis that sleep loss disrupts areas of the brain that are important for the integration of affect and cognition in the service of judgment and decision-making, Dr Killgore said.

'Most of us are confronted with moral dilemmas nearly every day, although the majority of these choices are minor and of little consequence,' he said.

'It is well within the realm of science to ask how the brain goes about solving such dilemmas and what factors, whether internal or external to the individual, contribute to the judgments and decisions that are ultimately reached.'

The authors, however, said the study does not suggest that sleep deprivation leads to a decline in morality or the quality of moral beliefs.

People with high 'emotional intelligence' were less susceptible to changes in moral judgments as a function of sleep loss, Dr Killgore said.

Emotionally intelligent people are effective at managing their own emotions and the emotions of others, 'able to discriminate among subtle aspects of those emotions and skilled at applying that information effectively to make decisions and guide behaviour', the authors said.

BLOOMBERG