Why your perception of how you slept last night is so important...
Just believing that you’ve slept better than you really have is enough to boost cognitive performance the next day, a recent study finds.
The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, divided 164 people into two groups (Draganich & Erdal, 2014).
Both
were given a lecture on how important sleep quality is and that they
would be given a new test of how well they had slept the previous night.
They were also told that the average amount of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep that people get each night is 20%.
Their ‘brainwave frequency’ was then measured and they were shown formulas and spreadsheets.
Despite the measurements being a sham:- One group was told they’d got ‘above average’ sleep quality, spending 28.7% in REM sleep.
- The other group was told they’d got ‘below average’ sleep, spending just 16.2% in REM sleep.
- These numbers had no relationship to how they had actually slept and were just made up to try and convince one group they’d slept better than the other.
- Afterwards, all the participants were given a battery of cognitive tests.
- Those told they’d slept better scored higher on tests of attention and memory than those told they’d slept poorly.
Interestingly, the researchers also collected self-reported data on how people thought they had slept the previous night.
- Those told they’d slept better scored higher on tests of attention and memory than those told they’d slept poorly.
Interestingly, the researchers also collected self-reported data on how people thought they had slept the previous night.
There was no association between the self-report measures and how people did on the tests of attention and memory.
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Magic mindset
This experiment is another great example of the placebo effect. It could also be entitled "The Power of Belief".See ya, eh!Bob
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