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Too Tired to Lean In? Sleep Quality Impacts Women’s Daily Intentions to Pursue Workplace Status

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Abstract

An assumption of sleep and self-regulation theories is that sleep quality impacts mood which, in turn, prompts individuals to revise their work-related goals. We propose that gender differences in emotion, emotional regulation, and career aspirations layer complexity onto these basic assumptions. In the current work, we investigate the effect of daily sleep quality – via positive affect – on intentions to pursue more status and responsibility at work (i.e., aspirations), as a function of participant gender. We test our model using experience sampling methodology, surveying 135 full-time employees residing in the United States twice daily across two consecutive work weeks (10 workdays), for a total of 2,272 observations. We find that among women, but not men, sleep quality is positively related to positive affect which, in turn, relates to greater daily intentions to pursue more status and responsibility at work. We discuss the implications of our work for research and practice.

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Funding came from internal university sources

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All authors were involved in the design of the study, with Authors 1 and 3 taking the lead. Author 2 conducted the data collection and analyzed the data. Author 2 wrote the methods and results sections. Author 1 wrote the introduction and discussion sections. Author 3 revised all sections of manuscript.

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Correspondence to Leah D. Sheppard.

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The authors confirm they have no conflict of interest. Participants provided informed consent and research was deemed exempt from full board review by Washington State University IRB.

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Sheppard, L.D., Loi, T.I. & Kmec, J.A. Too Tired to Lean In? Sleep Quality Impacts Women’s Daily Intentions to Pursue Workplace Status. Sex Roles 87, 379–389 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-022-01321-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-022-01321-1

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