Recent research conducted by a sleep researcher Tina Sundelin at Stockholm University showed that snoozing in the morning might not be as bad, though it has some positive effects on the waking process.
According to the research, snoozing behavior is especially common among young adults and evening people or the “night owls”. The most common reason for snoozing is feeling too tired to get out of bed when the alarm goes off.
Sundelin’s study showed that half an hour of snoozing does not have negative effects on night sleep or sleep inertia, the feeling of not quite being alert in the morning.
“If anything, we saw some positive outcomes, such as a decreased likelihood of waking from deep sleep. When participants were allowed to snooze they were also a bit more quick-thinking right when they got up.”
Furthermore, “Our findings show that those who snooze on average sleep slightly shorter and feel more drowsy in the morning compared to those who never snooze. But there were no negative effects of snoozing on cortisol release, morning tiredness, mood, or sleep quality throughout the night,” added Sundelin.
The research titled “Is snoozing losing? Why intermittent morning alarms are used and how they affect sleep, cognition, cortisol, and mood” by Tina Sundelin was published on 18 October 2023.
It was divided into two studies including determining who the snoozers actually were via the use of questionnaires collected from 1,732 respondents and examining how snoozing actually impacted performance and they had 31 individuals join them at their sleep lab.
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