Considering cross-cultural differences in sleep duration between Japanese and Canadian university students

Abstract

Sleep is a fundamental biological process that all humans exhibit, and there is much evidence that people suffer adverse health outcomes from insufficient sleep. Despite this evidence, much research demonstrates significant heterogeneity in the amounts that people sleep across cultures. This suggests that despite serving fundamental biological functions, sleep is also subject to cultural influence. Using self-report and actigraphy data we examined sleep among European Canadian, Asian Canadian, and Japanese university students. Significant cultural differences emerged in terms of various parameters of sleep (e.g. sleep time), and beliefs about sleep (e.g. perceived relation between sleep and health). Despite sleeping significantly less than European Canadians, Japanese participants slept less efficiently, yet reported being less tired and having better health. Moreover, relative to European Canadians, Japanese participants perceived a weaker relation between sleep and physical health, and had a significantly shorter ideal amount of sleep. Asian Canadians’ sleep behaviors and attitudes were largely similar to European Canadians suggesting that people acculturate to local cultural sleep norms.

Optimal movement behaviors: correlates and associations with anxiety symptoms among Chinese university students

“…Notably, there may be differences in university students’ optimal movement behaviors across distinct socio-cultural backgrounds. Existing studies indicated that young people from eastern countries reported lower levels of PA [ 57 ], higher levels of SB [ 30 ], and shorter sleep duration [ 58 , 59 ] than their western counterparts, especially in eastern Asian countries. This might be because of the sedentary culture induced by the intensive competition of the higher education, wherein college students have to sacrifice PA and sleep time for better academic performance [ 60 ].…”

Sleep deprivation and memory: Meta-analytic reviews of studies on sleep deprivation before and after learning.

“…The use of solely English language sources limits our understanding of any possible cross-cultural differences in effects of sleep on memory. Indeed, there are many cross-cultural differences in sleep habits (e.g., Cheung et al, 2021), and although we are not aware of any studies that have systematically compared sleep-associated memory consolidation effects across cultures, our reliance on English language literature means that we would not have captured such differences if they do exist.…”

Associations between the composition of daily time spent in physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep and risk of depression: Compositional data analyses of the 1970 British cohort Study

“…Given cultural differences in sleep duration, efficiency and perceived need in Japan (Cheung et al, 2021), country level differences may explain why the benefits of sleep and MVPA differ between studies. Notably, Kitano et al (2020) reported an average sleep duration of 5.7 h and 7.1 h on weekday and weekend nights, respectively.…”