Sleep deprivation may lead not only to bleary-eyed mornings, but clouded moral judgment as well. In recent years, brain imaging studies have found that an area called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex appears to play an important role in forming moral judgments. There's also evidence that sleep deprivation lowers metabolic activity in this brain region. It's possible that sleeplessness slows the brain's ability to integrate cognitive and emotional information, which is needed to address serious moral dilemmas. Researchers from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, USA, did tests on 26 healthy military personnel. The volunteers were presented with various scenarios, and then asked whether a given course of action would be 'appropriate' or 'inappropriate'. The situations ranged from minor, morally inconsequential ones to serious personal dilemmas in which the decision would harm someone in order to protect someone else. Study participants were presented with the scenarios before and after 53 hours of sleep deprivation. The dilemmas in this case were hypothetical scenarios, and not actual events. Te findings could have implications for people who are both routinely sleep-deprived and often need to make quick decisions in a crisis - such as soldiers in combat and medical professionals. It was found that the volunteers took a longer time to mull over the morally charged questions when they were sleep-deprived than when they were well rested. This was not the case with the more minor, non-moral scenarios. Some volunteers changed their views of what was morally acceptable after they'd been awake for two days. This was not universally true, however; volunteers who, at the beginning of the study, scored high on a measure known as 'emotional intelligence"'did not waver on what they found morally appropriate. Emotional intelligence refers to a person's ability to understand his or her own emotions and those of others, and to effectively relate to other people. The above findings suggest that people with particularly well-developed emotional/social capacities are less susceptible to the effects of sleep deprivation on moral judgment. There's some evidence that facets of emotional intelligence can be developed and improved. It might be, hence, worthwhile to study the effects of emotional-skills training for people who routinely face moral dilemmas under stressful conditions.
Sleep,
March 2007