Snoozing Your Alarm Won’t Make You Sleepier

On the first night, the participants went to bed and woke up at their usual times without using the snooze button.

About a week later, they came back to the lab, where they set their alarm to ring 30 minutes before they needed to get up and repeatedly pressed the snooze button every 9 to 10 minutes.

Right after they woke up, the participants had a saliva test to check their cortisol hormone levels, which can indicate how awake they are.

They also rated how sleepy they felt on a scale from 1 to 9 and underwent tests to assess their thinking abilities and mood. These tests were conducted right after waking up and again 40 minutes later.

The study showed that after snoozing, cortisol levels were slightly higher, but there were no significant differences in terms of feeling sleepy, mood, or cognitive performance when compared to waking up immediately.

On average, the participants snoozed for about six minutes less, and there were indications of slightly worse sleep quality during the last half-hour of their sleep, as measured by monitoring their brain activity. However, there were no significant differences in sleep quality over the entire two nights.

It’s worth noting that the participants in the study were habitual snoozers, so these results may not be applicable to people who only occasionally hit the snooze button.

In another part of the experiment, the researchers surveyed nearly 1500 people about their sleep habits. About 69 percent of respondents reported snoozing at least some of the time, mainly on workdays.

These snoozers were typically women, around six years younger on average, and four times more likely to identify themselves as night owls compared to those who didn’t snooze.