Sleep Deprivation to Aggressive Behavior
Sleep Depression, Depletion & Aggressive Behavior Article Evaluation paper Does sleep deprivation affect a person’s self-control? Does the availability of one’s self-control be affected by the lack of sleep? Nonetheless, Can sleep deprivation cause someone to display more aggressive behaviors? A group of researchers wanted to answers these three questions. The researchers produced an experiment to explore the variable of sleep deprivation & its correlation to self-control & aggressive behavior.
According to the Limited Self Regulatory Model, self- regulation is more difficult when someone is fatigued or has limited energy. When energy of mental activity is low, a person’s self-control is impaired, a person is considered to be in a state of “depletion” (self-regulation failure. ) Fifty-eight participants were separated in two groups: sleep deprived (depletion group,) with no sleep for twenty-four hours prior to the experiment & non-sleep deprived (non-depletion group) The participants were instructed to watch unpleasant footage from two films & their reactions were observed by a video camera .
Participants in the sleep-deprived group were asked to show no facial expressions, where as the non-depletion condition were told to act naturally. Participants instructed to neutralize their facial expressions were less expressive than participants instructed to act naturally. With in the experiment, an aggression task was given to participants designed to measure their aggression. Participants were told they were going to play a trail game & to win the game they must push a key faster than online opponent.Sleep Deprivation to Aggressive Behavior
Prior to each trial the participants were asked to set the noise level (between 0-10, 0= no sound, 10= loudest sound), which would sound at the opponent when the participant would win. After each trail the opponent’s noise choice level was displayed on the screen as one level higher than what the participant set. As a result, participants were thought to believe their opponent were more aggressive than they were, evoking aggressive behavior from the participant. Thus participants in the sleep deprived/ depletion group selected higher noise levels than non- sleep deprived/ non-depletion group.
