Daily stress robustly impairs sleep and elevates cognitive pre-sleep arousal, which partially mediates its negative effects on sleep variables, while multidimensional perfectionism was not associated with sleep nor did it moderate the stress-sleep link.
Daily stress was significantly associated with shorter objective sleep duration in university students.
Daily stress was significantly associated with lower subjective sleep quality.
Daily stress was significantly associated with longer subjective sleep onset latency (SOL).
Daily stress was significantly associated with higher cognitive pre-sleep arousal.
Cognitive pre-sleep arousal partially mediated the relationship between daily stress and all three sleep outcomes.
Neither perfectionistic concerns nor perfectionistic strivings predicted any sleep parameters.
No interaction effects between perfectionism and daily stress on sleep outcomes were found.
Emotional distress, unlike perfectionism, predicted longer SOL via heightened cognitive pre-sleep arousal in exploratory analyses.
The study used a 14-day micro-longitudinal daily diary design combining objective and subjective sleep measures.
This research suggests that among university students, the stress they experience on a given day has a meaningful negative impact on that night's sleep — making them sleep less, feel their sleep quality is poorer, and take longer to fall asleep. A key mechanism appears to be cognitive pre-sleep arousal, meaning that stressful days lead to more racing or intrusive thoughts at bedtime, which in turn partially explains the worse sleep. This pattern was observed across objective measures (fitness tracker data) and subjective self-reports over a 14-day period. Contrary to what might be expected, perfectionism — whether the kind driven by high personal standards (perfectionistic strivings) or by fears of failure and self-criticism (perfectionistic concerns) — was not associated with worse sleep, nor did it amplify the negative effects of stress on sleep. This suggests that perfectionism as a personality trait may not be as directly relevant to night-to-night sleep problems as previously theorized, at least in this student sample. Emotional distress, however, did predict longer time to fall asleep through the same cognitive arousal pathway, suggesting that general psychological distress may matter more than perfectionism specifically. The practical implication of this research is that interventions aimed at reducing intrusive, ruminative thinking before bed — such as cognitive techniques used in cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia — may be a promising avenue for improving sleep in students who are under high levels of daily stress. The authors caution that some of their mediation model results should be interpreted carefully due to imperfect statistical model fit.
Haussmann A, Schilling N, Alfter M, Yahja J, Mertens A, Schmidt L. (2026). What Role Do Perfectionism and Cognitive Pre-Sleep Arousal Play in the Link Between Stress and Sleep? A Daily Diary Study in University Students.. Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.70136