Association of temperament with subjective sleep patterns

Abstract

Background: Emotional and cognitive functioning have been involved in insomnia etiology, and sleep disturbances are closely related to psychiatric disorders and personality traits. This study investigates the association of temperament with subjective sleep parameters.

Methods: In this web-survey, 5129 subjects (25.3% males) completed the Combined Emotional and Affective Temperament Scale (CEATS), which assesses emotional (fear, anger, drive and control) and affective (e.g. cyclothymic, hyperthymic) temperaments. Subjects also answered questions regarding subjective sleep parameters, psychiatric diagnosis, psychotropic medication intake and cigarette smoking.

Results: As control scores decreased, the later were the bed and the wake up time. Total sleep time was weakly associated with emotional temperaments. The higher the score of anger and the lower the score of control, the higher was the sleep-onset latency. As the anger score increased and the drive, fear and control scores decreased, the higher the number of nightly awakenings. The higher the drive and the control and the lower the anger scores, the better the sleep quality. For affective temperaments, depressives, labiles (related to ADHD) and cyclothymics (related to bipolar II disorders) go to bed and wake up later and have a worse profile regarding other sleep parameters. Hyperthymics and euthymics showed favorable sleep profiles.

Limitations: Sample included a significant number of subjects with psychiatric diseases and on psychotropic medication.

Conclusion: Dysregulated emotional activation (expressed as higher anger, and lower control and drive), as well as depressive, labile and cyclothymic affective temperaments were related to more dysfunctional sleep patterns.