Fear/Anxiety and Sleep Deprivation Combine to Predict Courage

Abstract

The current study examined the combined effects of sleep deprivation and anxiety on participants’ willingness to act courageously in both heroic and everyday situations. The participants consisted of 256 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 to 25 years old seeking regular and extra credit for their psychology classes through SONA. Following informed consent, the participants completed demographic questionnaires through Qualtrics, as well as the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and an adapted version of the Woodard Pury Courage Scale-23 (WPCS-23). The adapted Woodard Pury Courage Scale-23 measures participants’ willingness to engage in challenging tasks that require either heroic or everyday courage and the fear they would experience when engaging in these tasks. The six measures of courage included willingness to engage in everyday, heroic, and both acts, as well as fear when engaging in these actions. Fear/anxiety by sleep interactions predicted every courage measure except for fear when engaging in daily courageous actions. The results supported the hypothesis that fear/anxiety and poor sleep would combine to predict courage, and their implications are discussed.