Greece crisis: what are the effects of sleep deprivation on decision-making?

The Greek government and its eurozone creditors have reached a deal after marathon all-night talks, but can we trust the decisions and deals of sleep-deprived politicians?

Were the negotiators sleep deprived?

The talks lasted almost 17 hours through the night and into Monday morning. Politicians emerged to announce the deal looking weary and red-eyed.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the eurozone’s top official, said he did manage to sleep for a few hours. But he also emerged from the talks looking exhausted.

Does sleep deprivation hamper decision-making?

Yes, according to Prof Michael Chee, director of the centre for cognitive neuroscience at at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore, who likens late-night negotiations to torture. “It’s a horrible way to make a decision,” he said, noting photographs of Angela Merkel looking half asleep. He said: “It is kind of last-man-or-woman-standing situation in Brussels. When you’re sleep deprived your ability to process new information drops, your ability to deal with distraction is impaired, and your short-term memory declines. All the fundamental elementals of having to process information rapidly are diminished.”

Is sleep deprivation torture?

“Prolonged sleep deprivation is an especially insidious form of torture because it attacks the deep biological functions at the core of a person’s mental and physical health,” according to Kelly Bulkeley director of the Sleep and Dream Database. Writing in Psychology Today he said the worst effects include disorientation, visual misperceptions, apathy, severe lethargy and social withdrawal.

“Eventually the victims suffer hallucinations and a total break with reality,” he writes. But these symptoms only occur after days without sleep. The Greek crisis has seen many prolonged meetings over the last week, but none of the politicians involved have been entirely deprived of sleep. But Chee says the analogy of torture is useful when considering late-night negotiations because they are also about breaking the will of participants. He said: “I truly believe that the way they [European negotiators] operate is essentially the torture method to break people’s will by keeping them up so they are physically and mentally drained so eventually the most insistent person who is standing at the end probably prevails.”

What kind of bad decisions are made after sleep deprivation?

People tend to make over-optimistic gambles when they are tired and show recklessness about financial losses. “While well-rested participants sought to minimise the effect of the worst loss, sleep deprivation caused the same individuals to be less concerned about losses and to shift to a strategy that improved the magnitude of the best gain,” a paper by Chee’s team found. Describing the results to the Guardian, he said: “People take riskier bets and they become more insensitive to losses when they are deprived of sleep. You tend to chase gains, because the brain system that responds to losses is dulled when you are sleep deprived.”

What bad decisions have been made after sleep loss?

Some of the worst human and environmental health disasters have been partially attributed to sleep loss and night shift working, according to a study of sleep disorders and sleep deprivations. They include the tragedy at the Bhopal chemical plant in India, the nuclear reactor meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the grounding of the Star Princess cruise ship and the Exxon Valdez oil tanker.

Are there safety regulation to guard against the hazards of sleep deprivation?

Yes, and ironically the best known safety regulation on the risks of overworking is the European Union’s working time directive. It warns:

The improvement of workers’ safety, hygiene and health at work is an objective which should not be subordinated to purely economic considerations.

All workers should have adequate rest periods. The concept of ‘rest’ must be expressed in units of time, i.e. in days, hours and/or fractions thereof. Community workers must be granted minimum daily, weekly and annual periods of rest and adequate breaks. It is also necessary in this context to place a maximum limit on weekly working hours.

It is particular stern about night working. It says:

Research has shown that the human body is more sensitive at night to environmental disturbances and also to certain burdensome forms of work organisation and that long periods of night work can be detrimental to the health of workers and can endanger safety at the workplace … Night workers whose work involves special hazards or heavy physical or mental strain do not work more than eight hours in any period of 24 hours during which they perform night work.

Should politicians avoid all-night negotiations?

“Your ability to direct and hold attention and depress distractions all declines when you are sleep deprived,” warns Chee. He adds: “Clearly it is very suboptimal to make these very important decisions which affect millions of people. But this pattern of late-night meetings has been going on for years. It’s a tactic of wearing down the other side until they literally capitulate.”

Anders Sandberg’, research fellow at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, goes further. “Sleep-deprived negotiation is irresponsible and harmful,” he warned in a recent blogpost. He points out that sleep deprivation can hamper mental activity as much as drinking alcohol. “If you wouldn’t drink and negotiate, why stay up late and negotiate?” he asks. And he urges politicians to avoid all-night sessions: “When some[one] tries to mess with the agenda in the hope of coming out on top because of exhaustion, refuse to play the game: everybody loses if joint decisions are of low quality.”