Political sleep: the influence of sleep on attitudes toward immigration

Resumé

For decades, psychological and neuroscientific research has demonstrated that sleep plays an important role in our emotional regulation, behavior, and decision-making processes. Despite this, political science has largely neglected the role of sleep in shaping political attitudes. In this article, I argue that even mild sleep deprivation can increase skepticism toward immigration. I examine this by leveraging the transition to daylight saving time in spring 2024 as a natural experiment in which access to a survey was randomly distributed across 30 Facebook groups (N = 825) two days before and two days after the time change. The results show that, on average, participants expressed more critical views of immigration after the sleep loss, likely because of heightened threat perception. Overall, the article suggests that sleep deprivation may have short-term effects on political preferences, particularly in relation to threat-related political issues.