Objectives/Introduction: Although there is a growing interest in the effect of sleep loss on social behaviors, little is known about actual social interactions following sleep deprivation. Many social exchanges involve some kind of negotiation, ranging from discussing one′s salary with a supervisor to deciding who will prepare dinner in a household. As sleep‐deprived individuals have a shorter attention span, decreased executive functions, and are more emotional, we hypothesized that sleep loss would lead to worse negotiation abilities. We also predicted that this would be mediated by decreased attention.

Methods: In the first study, 182 participants were randomised to one night of total sleep loss or normal sleep. The following day, they performed a 15‐minute dyadic collaborative task, where they negotiated for the best possible outcome for the dyad. In the second study, 106 participants were randomised to two nights of 4 h sleep per night or two nights of 8 h sleep per night, after which they performed a 6‐minute dyadic negotiation task where the dyad partners had opposing goals. Prior to the negotiation tasks, participants performed a short psychomotor vigilance task.

Results: Although sleep loss affected reaction time on the PVT (p < 0.001 and p = 0.02, respectively), and longer reaction times predicted worse negotiation outcomes in the opposing‐goals task (p = 0.009), there was no effect of sleep loss on negotiation outcome in either study (p = 0.37 and p = 0.66, respectively). Reaction times did not predict negotiation outcomes in the collaborative task (p = 0.95).

Conclusions: Sleep loss does lead to decreased attention, which is useful for negotiation ability, but despite this, there was consistently no effect of insufficient sleep on negotiation outcomes in two large studies. Potentially, negative effects of sleep loss would be more prominent in longer negotiation settings, where lapses in attention may be more frequent.

Disclosure: Nothing to disclose.