A Good Night’s Sleep Is Not a Bad Thing

People don’t ordinarily boast about sabotaging themselves.

“Employees will talk about their lack of sleep as a means of gaining respect and admiration in the workplace,” said by UW Foster School of Business Assistant Professor Elijah Wee. “Which is puzzling because there are clear cognitive disadvantages of sleep deprivation.”

Wee investigated this apparently contradictory phenomenon in his study titled “The gendered effect of status-striving in sleep deprivation disclosure,” co-authored by Professor Giselle E. Antoine and Christopher M. Barnes, and recently published in the academic journal Sleep Health.

Wee clarified that this is not a common practice in all industries and does not apply to people discussing insomnia or other involuntary sleep deprivation. However, boasting about going without sleep can be a tool employees use to enhance their image in the eyes of their managers or colleagues. In these cases, people are letting others know “I worked all night on this,” as a costly signal of their ability to thrive despite bearing personal costs.

The impact of gender on sleep deprivation disclosures

Wee and his colleagues determined that the response to this varies according to the gender of the person making the claim. The team surveyed 217 working adults nationwide, asking study participants for their perception of a hypothetical teammate (“Pat”) who discloses they sacrificed sleep to work extra hours. In scenarios in which Pat was a male in the study, the study found a statistically significant increase in participants’ perception of Pat’s strength and status, which was not the case when Pat was female in the same circumstances.

Using a field study in an international freight-forwarding logistics firm based in the South Asia Pacific, they tested the phenomenon of sleep deprivation disclosure in working teams. They found that when there is less ambiguity about each member’s performance in the team, women employees who disclosed their lack of sleep were more likely to be perceived as willing to incur the personal costs of sleep deprivation for the benefit of the group, instead of being perceived stereotypically as sacrificing for the families.

Self-sacrifice vs. the perception of strength

In the third study, researchers had participants view videos of a meeting in which actors of different genders discussed their lack of sleep with co-workers. In this experiment, women were also perceived to have made greater sacrifices by going without sleep than their male colleagues in cases in which the team was successful.

“When men talk about sleep deprivation, they are often perceived as possessing the innate physical and mental caliber to overcome the negative effects of sleep deprivation,” said Wee. However, for women, the reactions are more nuanced and tied to the clarity about each member’s performance in the team. “For women, we found that the backlash only goes away when there’s no ambiguity about their performance, and even then, it’s about the perception of self-sacrifice and not about the perception of strength.”

Interestingly, these findings were consistent across age groups and the respondents’ gender. “All of us are socialized to assimilate some of these gender stereotypes, so our study suggests that even women observing another woman talking about sleep deprivation may exhibit the same similar level of biases,” Wee explained. 

Sleep deprivation is detrimental (no matter what you might hear)

Wee and his fellow researchers emphasize that while disclosures of sleep deprivation may have a positive impact on perceptions in the workplace under certain circumstances, actually going without adequate sleep is detrimental in the long run.

Wee says that in the current environment, people are getting mixed messages about the topic. “On one hand, you have CEOs who brag about how little they sleep. On the other hand, you also have leaders who talk about getting  7 to 8 hours of sleep because that’s absolutely crucial for them to get their work done.”

While the exact optimum amount of sleep varies by age and individual, adequate rest is essential, not only for workplace productivity but for overall health and wellness.

“We are really trying to promote the benefits of sleeping well,” Wee said. “There’s a wealth of research out there on the topic. We shouldn’t have to feel guilty about taking time off to feel rejuvenated. We encourage leaders to be role models for good sleep habits and create a culture where people are not talking about sleep deprivation to get ahead, but instead, people are talking about things that contribute to their well-being, like spending time outdoors and getting enough rest.”

About Elijah Wee

Named one of 2023’s Best Undergraduate Business School Professors by Poets&Quants, Assistant Professor Elijah Wee focuses his research on power dynamics, social status, and organizational transformation. He has been published in leading management journals including the Academy of Management Journal and the Journal of Applied Psychology and received numerous research awards. At the Foster School of Business, he teaches topics relating to leadership and organizational behavior, and power and status dynamics.

“The gendered effect of status-striving in sleep deprivation disclosure” – co-authored by Giselle E. Antoine, Christopher M. Barnes, and Elijah X. M. Wee – was published in Sleep Health.