An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to Sleep Behavior: Exploring Personality as a Moderator

Although physical and psychological benefits of obtaining sufficient sleep are widely documented, large portions of the population do not sleep enough to function optimally. It is important to investigate what contributes to and explains our sleep behavior. It was hypothesized that the Theory of Planned Behavior, which consists of three predictors (attitudes towards behavior, perceived social norms, and perceived behavioral control) and a mediator (intentions) would be able to predict actual sleep behavior, and that the Big Five personality variables would moderate the pathways in this model. This was examined by recruiting participants via Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk and administering surveys concerning current sleep habits, the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Big Five Inventory, and a daily sleep diary. The results showed partial support for the proposed hypotheses, and there were also some unexpected findings. Perceived social norms and perceived behavioral control predicting intentions was significant for some moderators, while attitude and intentions predicting actual sleep behavior were not. Findings from this study suggest that more research needs to be done or a different model needs to be used in order to begin developing effective, individualized interventions to improve sleep