Scientists say beauty sleep is real. Lack of shuteye makes you unattractive, study suggests

Getting enough sleep is paramount for our mental health but now scientists say that “beauty sleep” is actually much more than a proverbial phrase. Psychologists suggest that getting a good night’s rest is actually making us more attractive in the eyes of others.

Whoever coined the expression beauty sleep was actually right. The believe that sleep hours conduce to beauty not just mental health has been suggested by a recent study published by the Royal Society Open Science.

Scientists set out to see how and if restricted sleep impacts the facial appearance and social appeal. Researchers started with a previous study which showed that people tend to be attentive to each other’s sleep habits and that acute sleep deprivation and looking tired are related to decreased attractiveness and health, as perceived by others. This suggested that we might intuitively avoid people that did not catch enough shut-eye as a strategy to reduce health risk and poor interactions.

Researchers want to know if this was the case so they co-opted 122 participants which were given pictures of 25 people, more exactly 14 females and 11 males, age range 18–47 years, which were photographed after 2 days of sleep restriction and after normal sleep. The participants had to rate the pictures according to how much they would like to socialise with the persons in the photographs.

Participants also had to rate the people in the photos measuring attractiveness, health, sleepiness and trustworthiness.

When looking at the results, scientists found that raters were less inclined to socialise whit those that have gotten to insufficient sleep. And people in the photographs that lost sleep were also perceived to be less attractive, less healthy and more sleepy. But there was no difference registered when it came to trustworthiness.

Psychologists say that their experiment proves that we are naturally inclined to detect if a person had enough sleep and we are less inclined to socialise with those that did not get a decent amount of shut-eye.

What made scientists even more interested in how the lack of sleep negatively impacts social perception is also the fact that the decreased willingness to socialise with sleep-restricted subjects was not solely due to the factors they intended to measure. Psychologists suggest that sleep deprivation could come with its own facial cues, beyond attractiveness, health or trustworthiness. And these cues could be a warning signal for others.

As social exclusion can have a negative impact, and taking into consideration the fact that sleep deprivation can be caused by depression and anxiety, the study points to the fact that several factors that fuel this vicious circle are intertwined. Stress, loneliness, depression or anxiety can lead to sleep deprivation which in turn can fuel social isolation amplifying isolation.

So, as much for our mental health as for our social interactions, a good night’s sleep is a necessity and not an indulgence. And sleep should also come first, before any beauty routine.