Have you ever felt discontent along with your sleep even when your smartwatch says you had a restful night? A recent study says the perfect measure to estimate sleep quality is how an individual feels about it.

The newest study from a team of researchers on the University of Warwick, the U.K, suggests the best way an individual feels about sleep quality affects their mood greater than what’s measured through sleep trackers.

Researchers evaluated greater than 100 participants aged 18 to 22 for 2 weeks. All of the participants were asked to maintain a day by day sleep journal and record their bedtime routines, equivalent to sleep onset, duration to go to sleep and waking hours. Their sleep satisfaction levels were also assessed.

Researchers then measured the positive and negative emotions of the participants five times throughout the next day. Using a wrist actigraph, their day by day period of rest and activity was also recorded.

“Our results found that how young people evaluated their very own sleep was consistently linked with how they felt about their well-being and life satisfaction. For instance, when participants reported that they slept higher than they normally did, they experienced more positive emotions and had a better sense of life satisfaction the next day. Nevertheless, the actigraphy-derived measure of sleep quality, which is known as sleep efficiency, was not related to the following day’s well-being in any respect,” lead creator Anita Lenneis, from the University of Warwick’s Department of Psychology, said.

The findings suggest that perceptions have more power in determining the mood of an individual after an evening’s sleep. The self-reported sleep quality of a person showed a greater effect on well-being than the sleep efficiency measured through the actigraph.

“Although a sleep tracking device might say that you just slept poorly last night, your individual perception of your sleep quality could also be quite positive. And in the event you think that you just slept well, it might help higher your mood the following day. Quite the opposite, if a sleep tracker tells you that you just slept well, but you probably did not experience the night as such, this information may make it easier to to reassess how well you truly slept,” Lenneis added.

Published by Medicaldaily.com