Sarah Regan is a Spirituality & Relationships Editor, and a registered yoga instructor. She received her bachelor’s in broadcasting and mass communication from SUNY Oswego, and lives in Buffalo, New York.
Image by Studio Firma / Stocksy
July 28, 2025
After a good night’s sleep, we wake up feeling refreshed and energized—right? According to research published in the journal Emotion1, the answer might be a bit more nuanced than that.
Namely, how you think you slept might matter more than actual sleep quality factors. Here’s what they found.
Studying sleep satisfaction versus sleep quality
For this study, researchers looked at over 100 young participants for two weeks, tracking their sleep habits as they related to things like mood and energy levels.
The participants kept sleep diaries, recording when they started winding down, when they went to bed, how long it took them to fall asleep, when they woke up, how long they took getting out of bed, and how satisfied they were with their sleep.
Then, throughout the day, participants rated their emotions and life satisfaction, as well as wore activity monitors to keep track of their movements versus rest.
And when the study authors looked at all the data, they were surprised to find that sleep satisfaction played more of a role in the participants’ well-being than you might think.
As the study’s lead author Anita Lenneis, Ph.D., explains in a news release, “Our results found that how young people evaluated their own sleep was consistently linked with how they felt about their well-being and life satisfaction,” adding that when participants reported sleeping better than they normally did, for instance, they actually experienced more positive emotions and had a higher sense of life satisfaction the next day.
Meanwhile, the activity monitor’s measure of sleep quality, which is used to determine sleep efficiency, did not predict well-being.
“This suggests there is a difference between actigraphy-measured sleep efficiency and people’s own perception of their sleep quality in how they link to people’s evaluations of their well-being,” Lenneis says.
What to do about it
The findings of this study suggest that the way you think you slept can contribute to your mood the next day, more so than what your sleep-tracking device may tell you.
As Lenneis notes, “Even though a sleep tracking device might say that you slept poorly last night, your own perception of your sleep quality may be quite positive. And if you think that you slept well, it may help better your mood the next day.”
Similarly, a sleep tracker telling you that you did sleep well can help you reassess how well you actually slept if you feel like you didn’t get a good night’s sleep, she says.
“A sleep tracker offers information about your sleep which is typically not accessible while being asleep, so, it may improve your subjective perception of last night’s sleep and thereby your overall next day’s well-being,” according to Lenneis.
Of course, if you’re looking to optimize your sleep, both subjectively and objectively, a research-backed, nonhormonal supplement is a good place to start.
The takeaway
The mind is a powerful thing, and when we tell ourselves we slept well, it would seem our bodies believe it. Not only that, but a sleep tracker might help you better assess how well you actually slept.
At the end of the day (and in the morning…), it’s clear the stories we tell ourselves about how we’re feeling can have a big impact on our mood and well-being.
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