It turns out our parents were on to something when they told us to “sleep on it” before making an important decision. That advice was recently studied by a University of Massachusetts Amherst psychologist named Rebecca Spencer. She and her colleagues looked at the effects of sleep on affect-guided decision-making in a group of 54 young adults.
Divided into two groups, each group was given a preview of a game, called the Iowa Gambling Task, in which wins and losses mimicked casino gambling. The first group were shown the game rules in the morning and were asked to come back in 12 hours after a day of normal activities with no naps. The second group was given their preview of the game in the afternoon and were told to go home to a normal evening and their usual night of sleep.
The object for both groups was to avoid losing and collect as much play money as possible. Those who’d had a normal night’s sleep drew from decks that gave them the greatest winnings four times more often than those who didn’t have the chance to sleep prior to playing. They also understood the rules of the game better.
Spencer and her team believe the role of sleep in everyday life is finally being well-characterized by science now. Sleep may well benefit us in making decisions due to changes in underlying emotional or cognitive processes. “Our guess is that this enhanced effect on decision-making is something that depends on rapid-eye movement or REM sleep, which is the creative period of our sleep cycle,” said Spencer.
Pretty interesting.
Read more at Medical News Today.
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