Science says people avoid you, think you're ugly and contagious when you're tired
"You look really tired". If this well-meaning observation has always rubbed up against your puffy eyes as a tiny "eff you", you're not off base. Science now recognizes why we're so sensitive to the sleep-deprived people around us, what it really means when we brand people as "tired" and what we're actually saying when we tell people how worn out they look. You may want to forward this one on to your passive aggressive co-worker.
A recent Swedish sleep science study (yay accidental alliteration!) looked closely at the way we perceive fatigue in others. The results, which touch on everything from attractiveness to trustworthiness to health, are gonna make you want to turn in early tonight. The experiment began with researchers having 25 random students (male and female) get a fantastic night's sleep two nights in row. A week later the same group was asked to get a couple of lousy night's sleep by restricting snooze time to 4 hours a night. After each 48 hour sleep-controlled period, subjects were treated to an all-expenses-paid photo shoot. Both their peppy and busted glam shots were then scrutinized by 122 strangers who were asked to scan for attractiveness, healthiness, trustworthiness and of course, sleepiness. The results were, apologies in advance for this dad pun, truly eye opening.
First off, the strangers, who were never shown the same person twice (ie they never saw a well-rested and sleep-deprived photo of the same human) easily picked out the tired students from the rejuvenated ones, almost as if they were hard-wired to spot them. More telling is that the sleepy Swedes were consistently rated as unattractive and unhealthy. Lastly, no one wanted anything to do with them. When participants were asked if they wanted to hang out with the rested and tired models, the exhausted faces were almost guaranteed to never get a text back. That went for both men and women. Trustworthiness, for what it's worth was completely unaffected: drained or reposed, you always look about as reliable as you're gonna look.
Important aside: no makeup was allowed when the pics were snapped. So things like skin tone and zonked racoon eyes (malleable physical traits that are aggressively affected by sleep) couldn't be masked. That's either a reason to be leery of someone wearing too much makeup or sound rationale to hit up your local cosmetics counter with a vengeance. Your call.
The researchers point out that the reason we can so readily spot sleepy faces is evolutionary. Many illnesses (both physical and mental) affect sleep quality. "An unhealthy-looking face, whether due to sleep deprivation or otherwise, might activate disease-avoiding mechanisms in others" they write. It's one of the reasons we appreciate healthy, vibrant skin and why we'd prefer not socializing with tired looking humans: perceived sleepiness triggers our self-preservation mechanisms. We don't want to hang out with sluggish types because they may be sickies and we interpret rested, energetic folk as markedly healthy humans. Of course, take that with a grain of sleep. Appearances can mislead (book by its cover and all that). A coffee and some concealer can easily raise your sexiness stock and looking a little low-energy and peaked likely just means you had a rough night, not that you're carrying Yersinia pestis (the pathogen that causes the Black Plague). I got you sleepy people of the world. Of course if you start vomiting blood everywhere, you're on your own.
Dr Tina Sundelin, the study's lead researcher, was mindful to add: "I don't want to worry people or make them lose sleep over these findings though. Most people can cope just fine if they miss out on a bit of sleep now and again." It's not the only marker of health but it can affect people's perception of you and even their desire to be around you. That said, her paper also points out that people reluctant to consort with a sleepy creature "might be making the right decision; sleep-deprived individuals report being less optimistic and sociable, they are worse at understanding and expressing emotions, less empathetic and more prone to accidents". Also, the whole sickness and attractiveness thing. Go ahead and set your alarm to remind yourself that "lights out" is a little earlier tonight.
So, to recap "you look tired" is (partially) code for "you ugly and I don't want to hang out in case you have yellow fever". But it also just means you're do for a little more shut eye, okay, Christine in Finance? No need to put so much mustard on it. Cripes.
Marc Beaulieu is a writer, producer and host of the live Q&A show guyQ LIVE @AskMen.