What is it about?
Poor sleep is often studied by looking at individual psychological symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, stress, or difficulties with emotion regulation. However, these psychological characteristics may also influence one another and function as an interconnected system. In this study, we examined whether the organization of psychological characteristics differed between university students with poor sleep and those with good sleep. We analyzed data from 391 Iranian university students and examined a network of 27 psychological characteristics covering personality traits, emotional symptoms, cognitive distortions, and emotion regulation strategies. The psychological network of students with poor sleep was much sparser than that of good sleepers. It contained fewer connections and more isolated psychological characteristics. Poor sleepers also showed substantially lower predictability, meaning that the characteristics in their psychological network were much less predictable from the other characteristics surrounding them. Importantly, the groups did not differ significantly in overall network strength. This suggests that the key difference was not simply that psychological processes were generally stronger in one group, but that they were organized differently. These findings suggest that insomnia may be associated with reduced integration among psychological processes. Looking at sleep difficulties as changes in an interconnected psychological system may provide a broader perspective for understanding the relationship between sleep and psychological functioning.
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Why is it important?
Insomnia is often studied by focusing on the severity of individual symptoms. This study takes a different approach by examining how multiple psychological processes are organized and connected within a broader system. Using a transdiagnostic network analysis of 27 psychological characteristics, we found that poor sleepers had a substantially sparser psychological network, more isolated nodes, and markedly lower node predictability than good sleepers. However, global network strength did not differ significantly between the groups. This pattern suggests that insomnia may be associated with differences in the integration and organization of psychological processes rather than a generalized increase in psychological activation. The findings provide a systems-level perspective that may help guide future research on how sleep difficulties relate to cognitive, emotional, personality, and regulatory processes.
Perspectives
From our perspective, an important contribution of this study is the opportunity to examine poor sleep beyond individual psychological symptoms. Psychological functioning involves multiple interconnected processes, and examining these processes as a network can reveal patterns that may not be visible when each characteristic is considered separately. Our findings suggest that the psychological organization of poor sleepers differs from that of good sleepers, particularly in terms of network sparsity, isolated psychological characteristics, and node predictability. We hope this perspective encourages further research into how sleep difficulties are related to the integration and coordination of psychological processes across different populations and psychological conditions.
Niloufar Moohebat
Shiraz University
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This page is a summary of: Insomnia and psychological disintegration: Evidence from a transdiagnostic network analysis, PLOS One, July 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0354243.
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