Article

Are you actually sleeping as much as you think?

While we often think of sleep as a simple block of rest, our perception of how long we spend asleep is notoriously inaccurate. A recent study investigated this by comparing participants' self-reported sleep duration with objective actigraphy (wrist-worn motion sensor) data.

The findings revealed a significant discrepancy:

• When asked to estimate their actual sleep duration on a standard weeknight, 78% of participants overestimated their sleep time by more than 80 minutes.
• Additionally, 70% of respondents reported that they "never or almost never" woke up during the night. However, objective actigraphy data showed that these same participants experienced an average of 9 brief micro-arousals (waking episodes) per hour.

This indicates that subjective sleep diaries are often highly inaccurate, reflecting a major limitation of relying on self-reports to measure habitual physiological states.

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