Objective: Emotional and cognitive functioning has been involved in insomnia etiology and sleep disturbances are closely related to psychiatric disorders and personality traits. This study investigates the influence of temperament on subjective sleep parameters.
Methods: a web-survey of 5129 subjects (25.3% males) completed the Combined Emotional and Affective Temperament Scale (CEATS), which assesses emotional (fear, anger, drive and control) and affective temperaments (e.g. cychothymic, hyperthymic, etc). Subjects also answered questions regarding subjective sleep parameters and psychotropic medication intake.
Results: As control scores decreased, the later were the bed and wake up times. Total sleep time was not or just weakly influenced by 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, cyclothymics, labiles and depressives used to go to sleep and wake up later and to have a worse profile regarding the other sleep parameters. Hyperthymics and euthymics showed favorable sleep profiles.
Conclusions: Sleep parameters were influenced by temperaments. Dysregulated activation (expressed as high anger, and lower control and drive) and cyclothymic, labile or depressive affective temperaments were related to more dysfunctional sleep patterns.