New research, published in the journal Neurobiology of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms, found that study participants had a harder time identifying facial expressions of happiness or sadness when they were sleep deprived versus well-rested.
The sleepy participants’ ability to interpret facial expressions of other emotions — anger, fear, surprise and disgust — was not impaired, however. That’s likely because we’re wired to recognize those more primitive emotions in order to survive acute dangers, said lead researcher William D.S. Killgore, a UA professor of psychiatry, psychology and medical imaging.
While emotions such as fear and anger could indicate a threat, social emotions such as happiness and sadness are less necessary for us to recognize for immediate survival. When we’re tired, it seems we’re more likely to dedicate our resources to recognizing those emotions that could impact our short-term safety and well-being, Killgore said.
“If someone is going to hurt you, even when you’re sleep deprived you should still be able to pick up on that,” Killgore said. “Reading whether somebody is sad or not is really not that important in that acute danger situation, so if anything is going to start to degrade with lack of sleep it might be the ability to recognize those social emotions.”
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The current study is based on data from 54 participants, who were shown photographs of the same male face expressing varying degrees of fear, happiness, sadness, anger, surprise and disgust. Participants were asked to indicate which of those six emotions they thought was being expressed the most by each face.
In order to assess participants’ ability to interpret more subtle emotional expressions, the images presented were composite photos of commonly confused facial expressions morphed together by a computer program. For example, a face might show 70 percent sadness and 30 percent disgust or vice versa. Participants saw a total of 180 blended facial expressions at each testing session.
Participants’ baseline responses to the images were compared to their responses after they were deprived of sleep for one night.
Researchers found that blatant facial expressions — such as an obvious grin or frown (90 percent happy or 90 percent sad) — were easily identifiable regardless of how much sleep a participant got. Sleep deprived participants had a harder time, however, correctly identifying more subtle expressions of happiness and sadness, although their performance on the other emotions was unchanged.
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