Through Rested Eyes: The Relevance of Sleep for Dynamic Changes and Stable Differences in Employees' Stress Appraisals

ABSTRACT Even though stress appraisals determine employees' states and behaviors at work, knowledge of their antecedents is limited. This research project integrates sleep research into the transactional stress theory to explain how sleep, as a key factor shaping employees' resource availability, relates to employees' appraisals of their job demands. We examine relationships between sleep characteristics (sleep duration, sleep quality, and chronotype) and stress appraisals (challenge, hindrance, and threat) at the intraindividual and interindividual levels. In the main study (144 employees, 937 days, and 2428 surveys), we used an experience sampling design to examine the relevance of sleep for dynamic within‐person fluctuations (i.e., morning levels and within‐day changes) and stable between‐person differences (i.e., mean during the experience sampling phase) in stress appraisals. In an additional sample for robustness checks (278 employees), we tested the replicability of stable between‐person relationships using a two‐wave design. Results revealed that sleep quality is linked to more favorable appraisals (i.e., lower hindrance and threat appraisals and partly higher challenge appraisal). Furthermore, daily sleep quality and employees' chronotype related to dynamic within‐day changes in threat appraisals (i.e., trajectories). Accordingly, we underscore the role of sleep for employees' functioning at work by explicitly connecting sleep to the stress appraisal process.