The more we fear the inevitable, the more likely we are to avoid it in the most unusual ways. For example, refusing sleep.
The ways of our unconscious are inscrutable. And in the most paradoxical way, it can influence how we behave and in what ways we avoid confronting what scares us. And what can scare us more than death? This unbearable anxiety, which in its extreme manifestations develops into a serious phobia, was described more than once by the ancients.
“Sleep is a small mystery of death, sleep is the first initiation into death,” said the ancient Greek philosopher Plutarch. His great compatriot, Homer, put it even shorter and more precisely: “Sleep is the brother of death!” Men who took part in a study that examined the relationship between procrastination before sleep and anxiety that their life will someday end would agree with these statements.
A study under the eloquent title “Life is short, stay awake: fear of death and procrastination before sleep” was conducted by psychologists at the Middle East Technical University. His results showed that men who are afraid of death are more likely to go to bed much later than planned for this time.
The less a person sleeps, the more time he has left to live.
According to the authors of this study, published in The General Psychology, men who are concerned about their own mortality tend to experience negative emotions in relation to sleep. Moreover, these feelings may be conscious, or they may not be tracked at all.
Why it happens? For us, those hours that we set aside for sleep are not a consciously lived period and seem to be “time taken from life,” psychologists are sure. And the less a person sleeps, the more time he has left for life.
Therefore, one who is familiar with the fear of death can postpone sleep as an activity that is really frightening. So if your husband can’t put down his smartphone, although it’s high time for him to sleep peacefully next to you, it may not be at all that he came across a terribly interesting video.
How to calculate fear?
Turkish psychologists surveyed 229 volunteers of both sexes about what their “sleeping habits” look like. The study participants also spoke about their attitude to death and self-control skills. The researchers also studied what the chronotype of each of the survey participants is.
It turned out that the fear of death was typical for those participants who also spoke about their procrastination before sleep. But this only applied to male participants. That is, men who agreed with statements like “I’m worried that death is inevitable and unavoidable” also tended to agree with phrases like “I go to bed later than I intended.”
What about women?
Meanwhile, researchers have not found any connection between evening procrastination and fear of death in women. Why did it happen? Psychologists think that women and men approach risks differently. Those who indulge in procrastination before going to bed usually imagine what results this can lead to.
The next day they will feel tired, their performance will decrease, and their attention will become distracted. And yet they deliberately behave in this way, risking their health and well-being. The study showed that thoughts about death provoke men to risky behavior, but women did not find such a bunch.
Procrastinating owl
Of course, fear of death is not the only factor scientists have linked to pre-sleep procrastination. For example, there is also a connection between postponing a night’s rest and the chronotype, that is, the individual characteristics of the circadian rhythm of a particular person, and they are influenced by genetics.
So, it turned out that “owls” are more likely than “larks” and “doves” to procrastinate at a time when they should already be watching the tenth dream. Psychologists consider the study to be “trial”: they are only trying to study the relationship between the fear of death and procrastination before sleep. Perhaps we have yet to learn a lot of interesting things about why we avoid visiting the kingdom of Morpheus.