Affective recovery from stress and its associations with sleep

Good sleep habits are important for emotional well-being. Studies have linked sleep with people's ability to regulate their emotions in response to stressful events, yet little is known specifically about how sleep is related to a person's ability to recover affectively from a stressful experience. The current study examined self-reported sleep habits and their associations with both positive and negative affective recovery from a laboratory-induced stressor. Participants (N = 120) reported their sleep habits over the previous month and then engaged in a laboratory psychosocial stress task. Affect was measured before, during, and 6 minutes after the task. Different aspects of sleep were related to poorer positive and negative affective recovery. Worse sleep quality was associated with higher post-recovery negative affect, whereas worse sleep efficiency was associated with lower post-recovery positive affect. Findings suggest that poor sleep is associated with prolonged affective recovery from a stressful event. Implications for health and well-being are discussed.