Anxiety as a personality dimension of short and long sleepers

Abstract

To clarify the interpretation of a difference in anxiety level that Hicks and Pellegrini (1977) had reported as being incongruent with Hartmann's (1973) clinical findings that consistent short sleepers tend to be non-worriers while consistent long sleepers tend to worry, groups of 25 short- and long-sleeping undergraduate students were administered the Hindi version of Sinha Anxiety Scale. Higher mean score was found in the short sleepers than in the long sleepers. The difference between these means was significant at the .001 level. These findings supported Hicks and Pellegrini's earlier results, which questioned the validity of the clinical observations that were the basis for Hartmann's conclusions.