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This observational behavioural study examines whether individual differences in sleep quality, sleep timing, and chronotype are associated with prosocial allocation decisions in adults. Participants will complete self-report sleep and circadian questionnaires, including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire, a 7-day sleep diary, and a brief computer-based Dictator Game allocation task.
The study does not involve sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, treatment, clinical diagnosis, medication, or medical devices. Participants will not be asked to change their sleep schedule. The Dictator Game decisions are hypothetical and do not affect participants' compensation. The study is intended to describe associations between naturally occurring sleep-related individual differences and behavioural allocation choices, not to diagnose or treat sleep or mental health conditions.
This is a non-clinical observational behavioural study of adults aged 18 years or above. The study investigates whether naturally occurring differences in subjective sleep quality, sleep timing, and circadian preference are associated with prosocial decision-making in a computer-based allocation task.
Participants will first provide informed consent and will be assigned a participant code so that research data can be pseudonymised. They will complete demographic questions and sleep-related self-report measures. These measures include the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, which assesses subjective sleep quality over the previous month, and the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire, which assesses sleep timing on workdays and free days and provides chronotype-related variables. Participants will also complete a 7-day sleep diary recording daily sleep-related information such as bedtime, estimated sleep onset, wake time, rise time, naps, subjective sleep quality, and schedule-related information.
Prosocial allocation behaviour will be assessed using a brief computer-based Dictator Game task. In this task, participants make hypothetical allocation choices involving distributions of money between themselves and another party. No deception cover story will be used. Participants will not be falsely told that they are interacting with a real paired participant if no real allocation exists. Dictator Game choices are hypothetical and do not affect actual compensation.
The primary aim is to examine associations between sleep quality, sleep timing, chronotype-related measures, and prosocial allocation behaviour. Secondary analyses may explore whether 7-day sleep diary measures provide additional information beyond retrospective questionnaire measures. Exploratory analyses may examine whether chronotype, sleep timing, or time of day moderates associations between sleep-related measures and Dictator Game behaviour. These analyses will be interpreted cautiously and will not be used to make clinical claims.
The study is not designed to diagnose, treat, or induce any sleep disorder, mental health condition, or other clinical condition. The PSQI, MCTQ, and sleep diary are used as non-diagnostic research measures. No clinical diagnosis, treatment recommendation, or personalised sleep advice will be provided. The expected risks are minimal and may include mild boredom or tiredness, mild discomfort when reflecting on sleep habits or making self-other allocation decisions, minor inconvenience from completing the 7-day diary, and privacy concerns about sleep schedule information. Risk will be minimised through informed consent, voluntary participation, the right to withdraw, non-clinical wording, pseudonymisation, separate storage of identifiable records, and restricted access to research data.
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| Label | Type | Description | Intervention Names |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult Participants | Adults aged 18 years or above who provide informed consent and complete sleep-related self-report measures, a 7-day sleep diary, and a computer-based prosocial allocation task. Participants are not assigned to any sleep manipulation, treatment, or intervention. Sleep quality, sleep timing, chronotype, and prosocial allocation behaviour are measured as naturally occurring individual differences. |
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| Name | Type | Description | Arm Group Labels | Other Names |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep, Circadian, and Prosocial Allocation Assessment | Other | Participants complete non-diagnostic sleep and circadian self-report measures, including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire, and a 7-day sleep diary, followed by a brief computer-based Dictator Game allocation task. This is an observational assessment procedure only. Participants are not assigned to a treatment, sleep manipulation, sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, or behaviour-change intervention. |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Dictator Game Prosocial Allocation Score | Prosocial allocation behaviour will be measured using a brief computer-based Dictator Game task. The primary behavioural score will be the number or proportion of trials in which the participant selects the more prosocial allocation option across the task, with higher scores indicating more prosocial allocation choices. | Day 1 (single study session) |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Global Score | Subjective sleep quality over the previous month will be assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The PSQI global score is calculated according to standard scoring procedures and ranges from 0 to 21, with higher scores indicating poorer subjective sleep quality. The PSQI is used as a non-diagnostic research measure. | Day 1 (single study session) |
| Measure | Description | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|
| Dictator Game Response Time | Response time for Dictator Game allocation choices may be recorded as an exploratory behavioural measure, where available. Response time will not be interpreted as a clinical measure. | Day 1 (single study session) |
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
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Adults aged 18 years or above will be recruited as healthy volunteers from university and community settings. Eligible participants may include university students, university staff, and community adults who can understand English or Chinese study materials and complete computer-based behavioural tasks, sleep-related questionnaires, and a 7-day sleep diary. The study is not limited to PolyU students and is not designed to recruit participants with any specific sleep disorder, mental health condition, or clinical diagnosis.
| Name | Role | Phone | Extension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cehao Yu, PhD | Contact | +852 3400 3012 | cehao.yu@polyu.edu.hk | |
| Junkai Che, Master | Contact | +852 9783 8643 | junkai.che@connect.polyu.hk |
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| Facility | Status | City | State | ZIP | Country | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hong Kong Polytechnic University | Hung Hom | Kowloon | Hong Kong |
| PubMed Identifier | Type | Citation | Retractions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Background | Brocklebank, S., Lewis, G. J., & Bates, T. C. (2011). Personality accounts for stable preferences and expectations across a range of simple games. Personality and Individual Differences, 51(8), 881-886. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.07.007 | ||
| Background | Forsythe, R., Horowitz, J. L., Savin, N. E., & Sefton, M. (1994). Fairness in simple bargaining experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 6(3), 347-369. https://doi.org/10.1006/game.1994.1021 | ||
| 35998121 | Background | Ben Simon E, Vallat R, Rossi A, Walker MP. Sleep loss leads to the withdrawal of human helping across individuals, groups, and large-scale societies. PLoS Biol. 2022 Aug 23;20(8):e3001733. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001733. eCollection 2022 Aug. | |
| 22294820 |
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Individual participant data will not be shared outside the approved research team. Study findings will be reported in aggregate form only. Pseudonymised or anonymised data may be retained for future ethically approved research only if permitted by participant consent and institutional ethics approval.
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| ID | Term |
|---|---|
| D007319 | Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders |
| D000533 | Altruism |
| ID | Term |
|---|---|
| D020919 | Sleep Disorders, Intrinsic |
| D020920 | Dyssomnias |
| D012893 | Sleep Wake Disorders |
| D009422 | Nervous System Diseases |
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| ID | Term |
|---|---|
| D012890 | Sleep |
| ID | Term |
|---|---|
| D009424 | Nervous System Physiological Phenomena |
| D055687 | Musculoskeletal and Neural Physiological Phenomena |
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| Chronotype (Sleep-Corrected Mid-Sleep on Free Days, MSFsc) From the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire | Circadian preference (chronotype) will be assessed using the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire (MCTQ). The chronotype variable reported is the sleep-corrected mid-sleep time on free days (MSFsc), expressed as clock time in decimal hours, with later values indicating a later (more evening) chronotype. The MCTQ is used as a non-diagnostic research measure. | Day 1 (single study session) |
| Mean Sleep Duration From the 7-Day Sleep Diary | Nightly sleep duration will be recorded in a 7-day sleep diary and averaged across the diary days to yield mean sleep duration, reported in hours per night. | Daily for the 7 days before the study session (Days -7 to -1) |
| Background |
| Carney CE, Buysse DJ, Ancoli-Israel S, Edinger JD, Krystal AD, Lichstein KL, Morin CM. The consensus sleep diary: standardizing prospective sleep self-monitoring. Sleep. 2012 Feb 1;35(2):287-302. doi: 10.5665/sleep.1642. |
| 12568247 | Background | Roenneberg T, Wirz-Justice A, Merrow M. Life between clocks: daily temporal patterns of human chronotypes. J Biol Rhythms. 2003 Feb;18(1):80-90. doi: 10.1177/0748730402239679. |
| 2748771 | Background | Buysse DJ, Reynolds CF 3rd, Monk TH, Berman SR, Kupfer DJ. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index: a new instrument for psychiatric practice and research. Psychiatry Res. 1989 May;28(2):193-213. doi: 10.1016/0165-1781(89)90047-4. |
| D001523 |
| Mental Disorders |
| D012919 | Social Behavior |
| D001519 | Behavior |