In today’s political landscape, important decisions are often made by those who are severely sleep deprived. This raises the question of potential consequences of sleep deprivation for political decision making. Psychological research on the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive functioning, decision making, communication, and coordination in groups can help to answer this question. There are several effects of sleep deprivation indicating that it could have negative consequences. For example, sleep-deprived individuals are less flexible in changing plans and courses of action and are generally less able to deal with the unexpected. Moreover, sleep deprivation can have negative effects on motivation and learning in a group. However, there are possible ways in which sleep deprivation might not be a severe problem. For example, sleep-deprived people might compensate for deficits by using advice or by mutually monitoring group performance. Another point to consider is that problems associated with sleep deprivation may actually be less serious in the political world because of the so-called survival bias: Those who are relatively good at functioning well under sleep deprivation will be more likely to “survive” in the political arena; whereas, those who are less good at functioning when they are sleep deprived will be weeded out.

As evidenced in the overnight EU summits negotiating financial rescue packages for Greece in recent years, politicians have put themselves in the position of making important political decisions while in a state of acute sleep deprivation. Politicians even seem eager to create legends out of their own invulnerability to sleep deprivation: Bill Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, Winston Churchill, Donald Trump – all of them allegedly needed only four to five hours of sleep per night (though Churchill was a fan of the extended after-lunch nap, so maybe he shouldn’t count). Angela Merkel is famous for having a “camel-like” capacity for sleep and Hillary Clinton allegedly copes with tiredness by eating hot Jalapeno peppers.  In light of the far-reaching consequences of the decisions at stake, sometimes for millions of people, as was the case for the EU summits, I was wondering if it really is a good idea to make such decisions while being acutely sleep deprived.

So the questions here are: Does sleep deprivation have an (negative) effect on decision making? And do we need a policy – similar to regulations for pilots or truck drivers – to regulate sleep in political decision makers? Answering these questions can be tricky. Each overnight political decision is an individual case, often concerned with an emergency situation or made under the pressure of an approaching deadline. Thus, we just cannot know what the decision would have been if it were made in the afternoon after sufficient rest. Unfortunately – from a researcher’s perspective – we do not have a non-sleep-deprived control condition struggling with exactly the same problem, which would allow us to isolate the effects of sleep deprivation. What we do have is a rich and ever-growing pool of psychological research on the more general effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive functioning and decision making. Admittedly, this type of evidence is indirect, as it does not examine the influence of sleep deprivation on concrete political decisions. But still, the findings from that line of research might be a key to understanding how sleep deprivation could play a role in political decisions. In what follows I will give a brief overview of the effects of acute sleep deprivation on cognitive functioning and decision making. Afterwards, I will discuss the special case of sleep deprivation when making decisions as a group, since it is typically groups that make political decisions. Finally, on the basis of these empirical findings, I will try to answer the question of how harmful sleep deprivation might be for political decision making.

Effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive functioning and decision making

The best-known and most robust effects of sleep deprivation refer to rather basic cognitive functions, such as attention, working memory, and reaction times (see Lim & Dinges, 2010 for a Meta-analysis). The negative effects of what sleep researchers call moderate sleep deprivation (up to 24h awake) are similar to or worse than the effects of a moderate alcohol intoxication (0.5‰) (Williamson & Feyer, 2000). Sleep-deprived individuals are more prone to distractions because, on the one hand, distractions are very welcome as they provide the stimulation needed in the battle to stay awake. On the other hand sleep deprivation impairs executive mechanisms of the brain that are needed to inhibit reacting to distractions (Horne, 2012). Sleep deprivation also affects more complex cognitive processes involved in decision making, such as so-called information updating (Harrison & Horne, 2000). Information updating refers to the ability to integrate new information that might alter the attractiveness of the different decisional alternatives. Imagine a politician who has to decide between different key topics for his campaign when running for a political office. He formed his preference for one topic – let’s say gun control. Now he receives new information: A strong competitor plans to come up with a very similar campaign. This new information has the potential to alter the attractiveness of the decisional alternatives (in this case, making gun control as a key topic less attractive). Therefore, the ability to integrate this new information into the original decision, and to adapt this decision accordingly, is crucial.  Similar to impaired information updating, sleep-deprived individuals are more sluggish in reacting to changing environmental demands (Couyoumdjian et al. 2009) and their ability to foresee and weigh different potential outcomes is hampered (Killgore, 2010). In a nutshell, sleep-deprived individuals are generally impaired in dealing with the unexpected, that is, when they receive new surprising information, or when changes in routines that guided behavior previously are required (Horne, 2012).

Group decision making and sleep deprivation

One important feature of political decisions has to be acknowledged: At least in modern democratic societies, decisions are typically made in groups, be it a cabinet, a task force, or a president with his or her staff. This particular feature of political decisions becomes relevant for the case of sleep deprivation, since sleep deprivation has effects not only at the individual cognitive level, but at the social level, too. These social effects of sleep deprivation can alter decisions above and beyond the mere sum of the individual cognitive deficits of the group members. Making a decision in a group requires effective communication, interaction, and coordination of the individual contributions of the group members. Effective communication is seriously disturbed only after more severe sleep deprivation (36h and up, cf. Harrison & Horne, 2000) – levels that are very uncommon in political decision making. However, even moderate sleep deprivation can affect how people work together and how they combine their individual knowledge and efforts to arrive at a good decision (see Faber, Häusser & Kerr, 2015 for an overview). For example, sleep deprivation has the potential to increase social loafing in the group (Hoeksma-van Orden, Gaillard, & Buunk, 1998). Social loafing refers to the reduction of motivation and effort of the group members when they feel that their own contributions are not acknowledged, or have no impact on the performance of the group. Moreover, the negative effect of sleep deprivation on working memory capacity (Ilkowska & Engle, 2010) could increase production blocking: sleep-deprived people are more likely to forget what they wanted to say while they are waiting for the previous speaker to finish (Faber et al., 2015). Finally, due to the reduced cognitive capacities described above, sleep deprivation could hinder learning processes within the group. One advantage that groups have over individual decision makers is the potential for mutual stimulation and learning, so-called group-to-individual transfers. Group-to-individual transfer means the improvement of individual skills and capability as a result of working together in a group. For example, if a group has to solve a complex problem, an individual group member can learn from another group member regarding how to approach this problem most effectively. This potential could remain untapped as a consequence of sleep deprivation.

Political decisions under sleep deprivation

So, sleep deprivation in political decision making – is it bad, does it not matter, or could it even be beneficial? As argued above, in the absence of adequate “control-group designs” – honestly, we cannot know for sure. However, on the basis of the empirical findings from psychological sleep deprivation research, we can draw some hypotheses about what might happen in such cases. By now, after learning about the individual cognitive effects as well as the social effects of sleep deprivation, the reader might be tempted to assume that making an important political decision while sleep deprived is definitely a bad idea, maybe even irresponsible. However, there are several indications that it might not be too problematic at all:  

First, as described above, the major impairments of moderate sleep deprivation refer to basic cognitive functioning. However, in complex decision making situations, like negotiating financial rescue packages for a EU member state, such basic cognitive functions play only an inferior role. To illustrate, if a truck driver´s reaction times are increased due to sleep deprivation (and we are talking about a matter of milliseconds, Williamson & Feyer, 2000), this could have deadly consequences. In contrast, if reaction time is impaired in complex decision making, this should not have such severe consequences, since in these situations information is typically presented repeatedly, and is available in written form. 

Second, the group setting in which many political decisions are made could help to dampen the negative effects of sleep deprivation. In a study on the effects of alcohol on cognitive functioning, Frings et al. (2008) found – not surprisingly – that alcohol had a negative effect on individual cognitive performance: participants in the alcohol condition made more errors, compared to participants in the placebo condition. Interestingly, there was no difference between the alcohol and placebo condition when the task was performed in a group. The authors describe this effect as group monitoring, which means that the group members are aware of each other’s reduced cognitive capacity and try to compensate for it. In other words, the group members monitor their mutual performance and try to overcome any obstacles that stem from individual reduced cognitive capacity. It is plausible to assume that group monitoring also occurs in the case of sleep deprivation, and there is preliminary data for that assumption. Baranski et al (2007) found that sleep-deprived groups could outperform sleep-deprived individuals, given two conditions: The group members have to be aware of each other’s impairments and the individual contribution to group performance must be visible and have an impact.              

Third, a recent study (Häusser, Leder, Ketturat, Dresler, & Faber, 2016; http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24386) found that sleep-deprived individuals used more advice than well-rested individuals. In this study participants worked on a judgmental task (they had to estimate airline distances between European capital cities). In some trials they received advice from a highly competent advisor (who made very accurate estimates); in other trials, they received advice from a moderately competent advisor (who made less accurate estimates). In cases where the advice was of a high quality, the sleep-deprived individuals were able to redeem their poorer performance in a judgmental task, increasing their own accuracy. Hence, as long as good advice is available, sleep-deprived individuals may be able to compensate for cognitive impairments by relying on the advisor. However, this study also found a somewhat paradoxical effect: Sleep deprivation particularly increased advice taking when the advice was of only mediocre quality, and using this type of advice did not result in a better performance. Thus, sleep-deprived politicians – even more than well-rested ones – are dependent on the advice they receive being of high quality and coming from reliable sources.

Finally, and although I have no empirical data for this assumption, the likelihood of a strong survival bias in the political world is very high. Survival bias means, in this case, that only individuals who are less impaired by sleep deprivation will survive in the political world and will ultimately arrive at positions where they are forced to make important decisions in the night. If you cannot go without an 8-hour eleven-to-seven sleep you might have trouble getting into such a position. Hence, this selection process should result in a situation where primarily individuals who are less likely to suffer negative consequences from sleep deprivation are those who are faced with it. The political legends mentioned above and the fact that experience helps when coping with sleep deprivation (Horne, 2012) support this assumption.  

To rein in enthusiasm, there are also good reasons to refrain from making political decisions while sleep deprived:

     First, sleep-deprived individuals tend to be more rigid in their course of actions. They have more problems with information updating, with reacting to the unexpected, as well as with adapting plans and strategies to changing environmental demands (Horne, 2012). This becomes a problem when the decision is made in a dynamic environment, and it grows worse when the decision is made in a group. Decades of group-decision-making research (see Kerr & Tindale, 2004 for a comprehensive overview) show that groups show the increased rigidity that can also be observed in sleep-deprived individuals. Groups often tend to engage in information processing that reinforces existing preferences for courses of action, and they are poor in rerouting once a course of action gains momentum. For example, a classic concept in social psychology, groupthink (Janis, 1982), describes the tendency to prefer harmony and conformity within the group over critical thinking and controversy. Sleep deprivation could add fuel to this fire by making a group even more easily subject to groupthink.

     Second, as discussed above, sleep deprivation can have negative motivational effects (Hoeksma-van Orden et al., 1998). This effect occurs when the individual contributions of the group members have only little impact and therefore increases with group size. Hence, when managing a sleep-deprived group, it is of particular importance to keep the spirits high (cf. Barnes, 2011; Faber et al., 2015).  

     Third, although impaired basic cognitive functions might have no strong direct impact on complex decisional cases, it has to be acknowledged that they might be more problematic when decisions are made in groups, as this could potentially prevent mutual stimulation and learning. This is of particular importance when it affects groups with a future and a past (not ad-hoc task forces).

Finally, here are the reasons to assume that sleep deprivation could have beneficial effects on political decision making: there are none.

Concluding remarks

Sleep deprivation has the potential to negatively alter political decisions. The best possible outcome is that nothing bad happens, for example because the politicians involved are hardened by countless nights of decision making, and because the group compensates for individual impairments. Generally, it is best to refrain from making important political decisions while sleep deprived. Although at first sight this sounds easier said than done, one has to keep in mind that the perceived need to arrive at a decision by tomorrow morning is often man-made. The last federal election in Germany in 2013 provides a good example: The final agreement was made early in the morning after a 17-hour negotiation marathon. There was no external deadline, no emergency, and no obvious reason to negotiate through the night. In cases like this, it appears that politicians want to send the message that they are willing to burn themselves out for the sake of voters, to show diligence in getting the best outcome on their behalf. But the research reviewed here suggests that this kind of signaling may have its downside: it’s less likely that decision making under sleep deprivation leads to optimum outcomes, and therefore “burning themselves out” may be a disservice to voters all things considered.    

In the introduction, I raised the question of whether we need to have actual policies on sleep in political settings: We know about decreased performance due to sleep deprivation in truck drivers and pilots, so we have laws forcing them to maintain an adequate sleeping pattern. Increasing empirical evidence shows the potential harm of sleep deprivation for complex decision making in social contexts, so it would definitely be worthwhile to consider regulating sleep in political settings. As I expect considerable resistance against such regulations, for the moment I would emphatically recommend refraining from sleep-deprived decision making whenever it is not absolutely necessary. Moreover, as an appeal to the voter, scrutinize why a political decision was made during the night. Was there an objective need for it, or was it more about the message to you?

References 

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