A couple of years ago scientists in California had an intriguing theory. Might a lack of sleep affect a person’s desire to help out another human being? And so, like all good scientists, they put it to the test.
First they recruited 24 adults and split them into two groups – one of which pulled an all-nighter, while the other slept normally. Then they got everyone to answer a series of questions, such as “I would offer my seat on a crowded bus to a 60-year-old woman”, and perform a social cognition task, while their brains underwent an MRI scan. Finally, they replayed the experiment, swapping the groups.
What did they find? That sleep deprivation really does make us meaner. Indeed their paper, “Sleep loss leads to the withdrawal of human helping across individuals, groups, and large-scale societies”, found that 78% of participants “demonstrated a reduction in the desire to help others” after staying awake all night. Surprisingly, that applied to their friends as well as complete strangers.
There was something else, too. When the experts looked at the MRI scans they found this unwillingness to help out others “was associated with the deactivation of key nodes” in the brain, which related to considering the “mental state, emotions, and personal needs” of other people.
Can I make a suggestion to the Centre for Human Sleep Science, which conducted this fascinating study? Please book an immediate flight to Melbourne. You may have hit upon a working theory to explain why Australian Open organisers appeared nonplussed with Thursday’s play finishing at 3.39am on Friday, when Daniil Medvedev finally outlasted Emil Ruusuvuori over five tetchy sets.
Let us be blunt. It was a preposterous, idiotic and extraordinarily selfish act – and the organisers should be ashamed. At 3.39am there is only one thing we should be doing: sleeping.
Instead the sparse crowd got to witness the third‑latest finish in the tournament’s history, with Medvedev finally getting to bed at 7am. But at least he was well compensated. What about the staff and media who had to stay on? Or the ballboys and girls who got nothing – unless you count a gift bag and a food allowance. It is behaviour that would make even Ebenezer Scrooge blush.
There is nothing wrong with volunteering, per se. I know former members of the ball crew at Wimbledon who would have done it purely for the friends and the experiences (they earned about £200 a fortnight). But when it requires teenagers and young adults to stay up beyond 4am it reeks of exploitation.
It was not as if the Medvedev-Ruusuvuori match was an isolated incident, either. In 2022, Carlos Alcaraz’s US Open quarter-final win against Jannik Sinner ended at 2.50am, the latest finish in the New York event. And last year in Melbourne the clock had passed 4am before Andy Murray finally defeated Thanasi Kokkinakis.
You might think this would lead to a dark night of the soul. But the Guardian’s tennis correspondent, Tumaini Carayol, tells me that less fuss has been made in Melbourne about the late finishes this year.
One exception was the Russian player Karen Khachanov, who warned that starting just before 11pm was “not normal and not healthy for anybody to recover”. But tennis knows this already. Last year Elena Rybakina described herself as “destroyed” after her match with Daria Kasatkina in Montreal finished at 2.55am and she then struggled physically in the subsequent weeks.
Admittedly tennis is not the only culprit. The NFL game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins this month was played in -20C temperatures which was not only grim on the players but led to more than 30 fans being treated for hypothermia. Meanwhile at the 2022 World Cup, I was at a Lionel Messi press conference that started about 2.30am after Argentina beat the Netherlands – and, much later, in a huge queue with fans at the Lusail metro station.
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Yet late finishes are baked into the schedule of tennis far more than any other sport. And while new ATP and WTA rules state that matches now cannot start after 11pm, an improvement of sorts, this does not apply to grand slam tournaments.
The Australian Open would no doubt point out that it now starts a day earlier which should, in theory, allow matches to be more spaced out. But cynics suspect this is less about avoiding late finishes and more about making money.
This problem really should not be hard to fix. The Australian Open and US Open could decide to have a solitary night match, as at the French Open. Or they could start their night sessions a little earlier and institute a midnight curfew, an hour later than Wimbledon’s 11pm finish. Using tennis balls that are faster and don’t fluff up as much would also lead to shorter matches.
And while they hesitate, maybe they should finally read up on the numerous studies which show that sleep loss negatively affects us in multiple ways, both physical and mental.
There is a reason why the CIA has used it as an instrument of torture. Because sleep deprivation affects our ability to think, compromises our immune system, weakens our heart muscles, and negatively affects our reaction times, attention and learning and so much else.
Unsurprisingly studies in hospitals have also shown that sleep-deprived workers make more than double the number of attentional errors. Sometimes, though, we don’t need science to guide us towards doing the right thing. Basic human decency should be enough.