The relationship between sleep quality and the readiness to forgive

Objective. The link between forgivingness (which is a social-personality construct) and sleep quality (which is primarily a biological construct) is virtually unexplored. There are three theoretical possibilities. First, given the well-documented health benefits of forgiveness, it could be expected that as one component of health, sleep quality could be a consequence of forgiveness. A person who does not harbor anger would sleep well at night. Holding a grudge disturbs sleep, as cognitive arousal before bedtime can result in longer sleep latency. A second possibility is that sleep quality affects forgiveness. The bad mood and hostility resulting from poor sleep make one unforgiving. A third possibility is that forgiveness and sleep quality are under the influence of the same set of external factors, and so are correlated with each other. The present study sought to evaluate these possibilities.
Method. Two waves (about five months apart) of online survey data were collected from 165 Chinese teenagers. Sleep quality was measured with the 19-item Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index; readiness to forgive was measured with the 6-item “forgiving others” subscale from the Chinese translation of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale.
Analyses and Results. Correlational analyses of data collected at Time 1 showed that having good sleep and a willingness to forgive a transgressor were correlated with each other (r=-.16, pother five months later.
Conclusion. Causality between sleep quality and readiness to forgive a transgressor is not supported in our teenage sample. However, the two appear to be under the influence of some common factors, to be explored further in future research. Copyright © 2016 The 4th International Pediatric Sleep Association Congress.