Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Sleep and ego depletion

Sleep and ego depletion:
How does sleep affect the capacity for self-control and willpower?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

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Author: Scarlet M

Overview

Food for thought: Have you ever been cramming for an important exam and stayed up all night studying, only to find the next day you can barely even comprehend the questions, let alone remember a semester's worth of content? This is because your poor brain has been deprived of its much-needed reset. By denying your brain sleep, not only do you not retain anything you studied the night before, but you also lose valuable processing and decision-making abilities! Next time, skip the Red Bull-induced all-nighter and get a good night's rest so your brain can be at its best when you need it!

Sleep is one of the most important parts of our day. It plays a crucial role in maintaining our overall health and well-being. Throughout the day, our brains accumulate vast amounts of information and experiences. Sleep acts as a crucial period for sorting, consolidating, and storing these memories and learned experiences, allowing us to retain and build upon them effectively. Sleep also plays a crucial role in flushing out toxins that build up during the day.

In addition to its role in cognitive functions, sleep is a time for the body to reset and restore itself. When we sleep, the sympathetic nervous system 'turns off', and the parasympathetic nervous system takes over. This shift facilitates the release of growth hormones that promote cell repair and tissue regeneration. This restorative process helps heal tissues, build muscle, and strengthen the immune system to prepare us for the next day.

By understanding the importance of sleep, we can start to unpack why poor sleep disrupts our daily lives and health. Over time, chronic sleep deprivation can lead to more serious health issues, including increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, and weakened immune response. Recognising and addressing poor sleeping habits is crucial for both short-term and long-term health. Prioritising quality sleep is essential for optimal brain function, physical health, and overall quality of life.

Focus Questions: What happens in the brain when we sleep? What is ego depletion? Does a lack of sleep have long-term effects? How does sleep affect performance?

What happens in the brain when we sleep?

• How much we need on a day-to-day, What happens when we don't get enough sleep

Neurotransmitters

• GABA is arguably the most important as it inhibits the others in order for sleep to occur
• Histamine is heavily involved in keeping us awake, and when made inactive by GABAergic cells causes drowsiness and sleep.
• Serotonin are inactive during sleep (most inactive during REM sleep) and have a role in maintaining arousal and regulating muscle tone during sleep. Also assists in the sleep/wake behaviour

Glucose levels

• How it effects our self control/willpower (glucose)

What is Ego depletion?

• "According to Freud’s theory of personality, the ego is constantly working to keep the id in check. Like any other cognitive task, the ego’s constant efforts to satisfy both the id and the superego requires mental energy, which is limited" (D. Pilat and K. Sekoul, 2021)
• The idea of Ego Depletion is that it takes energy to make decisions and have self control. This mental energy is a finite resource and when depleted it becomes much harder to make appropriate decisions and practise self control leading to decision fatigue, moodiness and other 'symptoms'.
• "Spoon Theory" was coined as a term to describe Ego Depletion. You only have so many spoons in a day (and the amount can vary day to day), different tasks take a different amount of spoons, once you're out its very difficult to continue to complete tasks.

Does lack of sleep have long term effects?

General long term effects, within the brain, effects such as memory loss, lack of self control internal feelings of guilt/feeling out of control

Mental illness

• Lack of sleep has been linked to depression and risk taking behaviour

Increased risk off neurodegenerative disease

• Dementia
• How does it effect our interpersonal relationships? (Case study)
• Little or poor sleep has shown to increase unsafe and unethical practises within the workforce

Case study: Figure 1: WW2 poster created by the US Government encouraging employers to allow workers to get adequate rest to stay working In a study done by Mei Chen et. al. (2022) 79 employees were sampled across the East Coast of China to test hypothesise surrounding sleep and ego depletion, and whether or not these affected workplace conflict. The study found that those who has less sleep or a poor quality of sleep experience more conflict in the workplace. It was suggested that the cause of this was ego depletion when an indicudual did not get enough sleep, and hence had less self control then usual causing more conflicts. The study also stressed the importance of sleep to avoid burnout and consequently leaving a workplace, Figure 1 is an older example of this. Ultimately it emphasised that allowing workers to get enough sleep would improve workplace morale and productivity by avoiding ego depletion.

How does sleep affect performance

Why does self control and decision making affect performance

Shift Workers

• Case study on shift workers. (Make worse decisions due to lack of sleep/disrupted sleep)
• Shift work sleep disorder (SWSD)

Athletes

• Athletes are more likely to experience injury when having less sleep

Learning features

Interactive learning features help to bring online book chapters to life and can be embedded throughout the chapter.

(Note: I am leaving this here because I don't want to lose the ability to look at how to create these but I will delete down the track, thank you for understanding)

Tables

• Use to organise and summarise information
• As with figures, tables should be captioned
• Refer to each table at least once in the main text (e.g., see Table 1)
• Example 3 x 3 tables which could be adapted

Table 1. Descriptive Caption Which Explains The Table and its Relevant to the Text - Johari Window Model

	Known to self	Not known to self
Known to others	Open area	Blind spot
Not known to others	Hidden area	Unknown

Quizzes

• Using one or two review questions per major section is usually better than a long quiz at the end
• Quiz conceptual understanding, rather than trivia
• Don't make quizzes too hard
• Different types of quiz questions are possible; see Quiz

Example simple quiz questions. Choose your answers and click "Submit":

1 Quizzes are an interactive learning feature:

	True
	False

2 Long quizzes are a good idea:

	True
	False

Conclusion

• The Conclusion is arguably the most important section
• Suggested word count: 150 to 330 words
• It should be possible for someone to only read the Overview and the Conclusion and still get a pretty good idea of the problem and what is known based on psychological science

Suggestions for this section: What is the answer to the sub-title question based on psychological theory and research? What are the answers to the focus questions? What are the practical, take-home messages? (Even for the topic development, have a go at the likely take-home message)

See also

• Ego Depletion (Wikipedia)
• Sleep deprivation (Wikipedia)

Suggestions for this section: Present in alphabetical order Use sentence casing Include the source in parentheses

References

Barnes, C. M., Schaubroeck, J., Huth, M., & Ghumman, S. (2011). Lack of sleep and unethical conduct. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 115(2), 169-180. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2011.01.009

Chen, M., Dong, H., Luo, Y., & Meng, H. (2022). The Effect of Sleep on Workplace Interpersonal Conflict: The Mediating Role of Ego Depletion. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 24(6), 901-916. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.32604/ijmhp.2022.020006

Milewski, M. D., Skaggs, D. L., Bishop, G. A., Pace, J. L., Ibrahim, D. A., Wren, T. A. L., & Barzdukas, A. (2014). Chronic Lack of Sleep is Associated With Increased Sports Injuries in Adolescent Athletes. Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics, 34(2), 129-133. https://doi.org/10.1097/bpo.0000000000000151

Monti, J. M. (2011). Serotonin control of sleep-wake behavior. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 15(4), 269-281. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2010.11.003

Nagai, M., Hoshide, S., & Kario, K. (2010). Sleep duration as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease- a review of the recent literature. Curr Cardiol Rev, 6(1), 54-61. https://doi.org/10.2174/157340310790231635

Pilat, D., & Sekoul, K. (2021). Ego Depletion. The Decision Lab. https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/psychology/ego-depletion

Pilcher, J. J., Morris, D. M., Donnelly, J., & Feigl, H. B. (2015). Interactions between sleep habits and self-control. Front Hum Neurosci, 9, 284. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00284

Siegel, J. M. (2004). The neurotransmitters of sleep. J Clin Psychiatry, 65 Suppl 16(Suppl 16), 4-7.

Thakkar, M. M. (2011). Histamine in the regulation of wakefulness. Sleep Med Rev, 15(1), 65-74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2010.06.004

Vaou, O. E., Lin, S. H., Branson, C., & Auerbach, S. (2018). Sleep and Dementia. Current Sleep Medicine Reports, 4(2), 134-142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40675-018-0112-9

Zaffanello, M., Pietrobelli, A., Cavarzere, P., Guzzo, A., & Antoniazzi, F. (2024). Complex relationship between growth hormone and sleep in children: insights, discrepancies, and implications [Review]. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2023.1332114

External links

• Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep (https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/public-education/brain-basics/brain-basics-understanding-sleep#:~:text=Without%20sleep%20you%20can't,neurons)%20communicate%20with%20each%20other.)
• How Sleep Affects Your Health (https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/sleep-deprivation/health-effects#:~:text=Studies%20also%20show%20that%20sleep,%2C%20and%20risk%2Dtaking%20behavior.)

Suggestions for this section: Only select links to major external resources about the topic Present in alphabetical order Include the source in parentheses after the link