About

Although the fields of sleep science and psychology have been well established, it's rare that you hear about them in conjunction. This overlap of sleep and psychology is a rich, largely undiscovered discipline that seeks to answer fundamental questions that have been left unanswered for centuries.

The mission of the Consortium is to facilitate collaborations of faculty and student research aimed at increasing individual and population health and advancing the discipline of sleep psychology. We foster interdisciplinary collaborations in efforts to enhance knowledge regarding sleep processes, antecedents and consequences of disrupted sleep, and evidence-based sleep promotion efforts. Central to our mission is student involvement, allowing faculty and students to access resources, data, and mentoring relationships that will ultimately train the future generation of sleep psychologists, scientists, and clinicians.

Although those who identify as a sleep psychologists are both sleep scientists and psychologists, many people in psychology, sleep science, and other disciplines make up a large portion of those who fit within the discipline and contribute to the literature of this field of study. Sleep psychology is a true interdisciplinary field.

• What is sleep and how can we best measure it?
• How can psychological principles/methods be used to better understand sleep and promote sleep health?
• What is the relationship between sleep and consciousness?
• How do values, beliefs, biases, and attitudes influence sleep, sleep perception, sleep disorders, self-reported sleep, and sleep health behaviors?
• What role does sleep play in psychological well-being, mental health, motivation, emotion, learning/memory, and cognition?
• What factors influence individual differences in vulnerability to sleep deprivation?
• What are the functions of dreams (including nightmares) and how can they be influenced to promote sleep health?
• How do psycho-social factors influence sleep, sleep disorders, and sleep health disparities?
• How can sleep health behaviors be used to promote global health?
• What is the role of sleep in psychological development?
• How does sleep differ across individuals, gender, cultures, and species and how can those differences be used to better understand sleep?
• What are the psychological factors that may influence the impact of geographical location (e.g., time zone) and environmental impacts of global warming and related changes (e.g., air pollution) on sleep?
• How do principles of behavioral economics relate to sleep health decisions, sleep-related treatment seeking/response, and sleep-related purchasing?
• How do psychological factors (e.g., personality, expectations, preferences) interact with biological determinants of circadian rhythms?
• What impact does sleep health behaviors have on global warming? How do sleep behaviors impact behaviors related to carbon emissions? Do people who have sleep loss leave a larger carbon imprint than those who sleep more due to larger processed food consumption and more driving?
• What are the psychological components to known effects of light exposure that vary by geographical location (e.g., people who live on the western edge of time zones sleep worse than those who sleep on the eastern edge and people who live where the day is longer sleep differently than they do where the day is shorter)?
• What are the psychological components of rural versus urban sleep health disparities?

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