Are there any gender differences in social motivation in sleep-deprived individuals? : An experimental study.

Abstract: This study aimed to examine gender differences in socialmotivation when being sleep-deprived. Females are seen inprevious research to be more affected by sleep loss than males.Being deprived of sleep can decrease individuals’ motivation tobe a part of social behaviors. Social motivation in this study refersto how willing individuals are to socially interact with strangers.Two hypotheses were stated, females and males becoming lesssocially motivated after sleep deprivation, and females beingmore affected by sleep deprivation than males when it comes tosocial motivation. Also, an exploratory approach, that females areless socially motivated than males. The social motivation wasmeasured in two ways; participants’ self-reported motivation forsocializing with strangers and raters’ perception of theparticipants’ social motivation in an experimental social break,after the participants had slept 4 or 9 hours for two nights in arow. There were 46 participants in the study (30 female; mean age= 25.8, SD = 4.7). A linear mixed-effects analysis with a repeatedmeasure design showed no significant difference or interaction ingender when it comes to the effect of sleep loss and socialmotivation. The analysis showed a significant main effect ofsleep, in that self-reported social motivation decreased whenbeing sleep deprived for both genders. The findings indicate thatmore knowledge about gender differences in social motivationwhen sleep deprived is needed, in how sleep loss could impactopportunities and performance in school- and working life, and social relationships.