Abstract
Good sleep habits are important for emotional well‐being. Studies have linked sleep with people’s ability to regulate their emotions in response to stressful events, yet little is known specifically about how sleep is related to a person’s ability to recover affectively from a stressful experience. The current study examined self‐reported sleep habits and their associations with both positive and negative affective recovery from a laboratory‐induced stressor. Participants (N = 120) reported their sleep habits over the previous month and then engaged in a laboratory psychosocial stress task. Affect was measured before, during, and 6 minutes after the task. Different aspects of sleep were related to poorer positive and negative affective recovery. Worse sleep quality was associated with higher post‐recovery negative affect, whereas worse sleep efficiency was associated with lower post‐recovery positive affect. Findings suggest that poor sleep is associated with prolonged affective recovery from a stressful event. Implications for health and well‐being are discussed.