Posted July 12, 2014 by Tristan Colasito

Have you ever stayed up late finishing or starting a buttload of homeworks? Has studying for an exam deprived you of sleep? Has asking existentialist questions prevented you to enter dreamland? Or maybe you just couldn’t sleep because of the loud music your noisy ass neighbour kept on playing. Either way, if you haven’t had any sleep, you might find this study helpful and interesting.

This study found that believing that you slept well, even if you actually didn't, could improve your performance. The undergraduate students that participated were first asked to report how well they had slept the night before on a scale from 1-10, 10 being extremely well. They were then given a 5 minute lesson on sleep quality and cognitive functioning. The lesson served as background information for the study. In this lesson, the participants were told that the average adult would spend around 20% to 25% of their sleep time in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) Sleep. Moreover, the participants were told that those who spend less than 20% of sleep time in REM sleep perform worse on tests of learning and memory, while those who spend more than 25% of sleep time perform better on tests of learning and memory.

Afterwards, the participants were connected to an equipment that would measure their pulse, heart rate, and brainwave frequency. The participants were told that their pulse, heart rate, and brainwave frequency will be used to measure how much REM sleep they got the night before. However, this was not true. This was done to give the participants the impression that the experimenters were really measuring their REM sleep time. After the “measurements” the participants were given a fake spreadsheet that showed how much REM sleep they had. The participants were told that their self-reported sleep quality was similar to the “measured” sleep quality. Again, this was part of the experimenters’ deception tactic. Lastly, the participants were asked to take a test.

Results showed that participants who were told that they had more than enough REM sleep performed better on the test, while participants who were told that they had less than enough REM sleep performed worse on the test. So what does this study imply? If we keep telling ourselves that we did not get enough sleep, we might perform worse on exams. On the other hand, if we convince ourselves that we had a good night’s sleep, we might perform better on exams. This is good news for us crammers. Master this technique or perish.

To know more, read: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/xlm-a0035546.pdf

Photo taken from: weightymatters.ca

Source: Draganich, C., & Erdal, K., (2014). Placebo Sleep Affects Cognitive Functioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(3), pp. 857-864.  

doi: 10.1037/a0035546