0281 Sleep Deprivation Impairs Cooperative Behavior Selectively: Evidence from Prisoner’s and Chicken Dilemmas

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Cooperation, the cornerstone of human interaction, has attracted much attention since it was indispensable in the contemporary world. However, little research has been done on whether sleep deprivation altered human cooperative behavior. In the present work, we investigated cooperation and sleep deprivation directly, aiming to evaluate the influences of acute sleep deprivation on cooperation with two classical social dilemmas, the Prisoner’s dilemma (PD) and the chicken dilemma (CD). Methods All participants (N=24) were required to come for the experiments twice, one time for normal sleep condition, the other time for sleep deprivation condition, with a counter-balanced sequence. In the following afternoon, participants completed the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) and two social dilemmas tasks, as well as the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS), the Risk Orientation Questionnaire (ROQ) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Results Our results demonstrated that sleep deprivation significantly impaired cooperative behaviors in the CD but not in the PD. In addition, this detrimental effect was not related with the alteration in the risk-seeking, objective alertness, subjective sleepiness, and mood. Conclusion The current findings revealed that sleep deprivation impairs human cooperative behaviors selectively. However, the underlying mechanism remains to further explore with neuroimaging studies and focus on the mediating role of general trust and sensitivity of loss. Support This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31500906), Guangdong Natural Science Funding - General Program (2019A1515012182).