Washington: According to a study performed by the University of Warwick, how people feel about their sleep has a greater impact on their well-being than what sleep-tracking technology indicates about their sleep quality.
Across a two-week period, over 100 participants aged 18-22 years were asked to keep a daily sleep diary about the previous night's sleep, including what time they went to bed, time they got ready to fall asleep, the amount of time it took them to fall asleep, what time they woke up, what time they got out of bed, and how satisfied they were with their sleep in general.
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Five times throughout the following day, participants were asked to rate their positive and negative emotions and how satisfied they were with their life. Participants also wore an actigraph on their wrist which measures a person's movement, for the duration of the study, to estimate their sleep patterns and rest cycles.
Researchers compared the actigraphy data with the participants' perceptions of their sleep and how they felt throughout the following day. They wanted to find out how fluctuations from people's usual sleep patterns and quality are related to their mood and life satisfaction the next day.
Lead author Dr Anita Lenneis, from the University of Warwick's Department of Psychology, said: "Our results found that how young people evaluated their own sleep was consistently linked with how they felt about their well-being and life satisfaction.
"For example, when participants reported that they slept better than they normally did, they experienced more positive emotions and had a higher sense of life satisfaction the following day. However, the actigraphy-derived measure of sleep quality which is called sleep efficiency was not associated with next day's well-being at all.