Stress and sleep quality: The moderating role of negative affectivity

Abstract

This study was designed to examine the influence of two personality variables (negative affectivity [NA] and positive affectivity [PA]) and three work-related stressors (interpersonal conflict, workload, and perceived ambiguity) on a multi-dimensional measure of sleep quality (going to bed, falling asleep, maintaining sleep, reinitiating sleep, and waking up). Three hundred and forty-seven female and 120 male undergraduates participated in the study. Our results indicated that (a) individuals high in NA tended to report lower quality sleep than individuals low in NA; (b) individuals high in PA tended to report higher levels of sleep quality than individuals low in PA; (c) sleep quality tended to relate negatively with interpersonal conflict, work demands, and job ambiguity; and (d) NA moderated the relationships between interpersonal conflict and sleep quality and between perceived ambiguity and sleep quality. Our findings are the first to show that personality and work-related stress influences different aspects of sleep quality. In addition, our findings are partially supportive of the hyper-responsivity role of negative affectivity which suggests that NA operates to amplify individuals’ perceptions of and reactions to negative environmental events. However, our results suggest that the hyper-responsivity model might be more complex than previously indicated.