Self-regulation
Does resisting temptations all day make us go to bed late?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
People who reported resisting more temptations during the day also reported putting off going to bed more that night, though the link was small.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — One-off retrospective online survey (MTurk) relating a time-weighted count of the previous day's resisted desires to that night's bedtime procrastination.
- N
- N=218 · 218 MTurk adults after excluding 27 of 245 who had a sleep disorder or worked night shifts.
- Population
- U.S.-based Amazon Mechanical Turk workers aged 18-75.
- Outcome
- State bedtime procrastination scale score and self-reported minutes of bedtime delay the previous night.
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Key findings
The depletion index correlated modestly with bedtime procrastination scores (r = 0.21) and with minutes of delay (r = 0.17). The simple number of desires felt, as opposed to resisted, was unrelated to procrastination. The results held when the first and last blocks of the day or the desire for sleep were left out, and an unpublished second sample showed a similar correlation (r = 0.27).
Methodology
Online participants recalled the previous day in six three-hour blocks, noting what they did, which desires they felt (such as for coffee, snacks, media or leisure) and which they tried to resist. Resisted desires were combined into a 'depletion index' that gave more weight to later ones. Participants then rated how much they had delayed going to bed the night before and for how many minutes.
Limitations
This is a correlational, one-time retrospective survey, so it cannot show that resisting desires causes later bedtimes. Tired participants who went to bed late may have recalled more resisted desires, and alternatives such as fatigue, feeling entitled to 'me time', or strategic effort allocation fit the data too. The depletion idea itself is contested, the effect sizes were small, and the sample was an online convenience sample paid a small fee.
How this study connects
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