Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Kevin Larkin

Committee Member

Shari Steinman

Committee Member

Ryan Best

Committee Member

Peter Giacobbi

Abstract

Research has shown that insomnia and poor sleep quality are related to a variety of negative physical and mental health outcomes. There is emerging evidence that the psychological construct of distress tolerance is related to the quality of one’s sleep, including the presence of insomnia. However, few studies have explored how additional factors may be related to this association. This study aimed to replicate previous research supporting the association between distress tolerance and sleep and exploring this relation by examining three different hypotheses (e.g., health behaviors, perceived stress, and emotion regulation) that could potentially explain how these two variables are related.

A sample of West Virginia University college students (N = 226) and a sample of adult participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) (N = 186) participated in this research. A variety of multi-method screeners were implemented to eliminate AI-generated responses from being included in these samples. These participants completed a set of demographic questions, the Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS), the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), Tobacco, Alcohol, Prescription Medication, and other Substance Use (TAPS) Tool: Part 1, The Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire (LTEQ), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ). A series of linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the relation between distress tolerance and sleep outcomes (e.g., sleep quality and insomnia severity). For health behaviors only, mediation analyses were run to examine if physical activity, tobacco use, alcohol use, or other illicit drug use explained the association between distress tolerance and sleep outcomes. Additionally, a series of moderation analyses were conducted to examine these health behaviors, as well as perceived stress and emotion regulation (e.g., cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), as moderators of the distress tolerance – sleep outcomes association.

Results from this study confirmed that lower distress tolerance was associated with poor sleep outcomes and that this relation was diminished among college students with high levels of physical activity engagement. Alternatively, the association between distress tolerance and sleep outcomes became stronger as levels of physical activity increased among the MTurk sample. Regardless of DTS levels, MTurk participants engaging in higher levels of physical activity exhibited decreased sleep quality scores than those with lower physical activity. Perceived stress was only found to be a moderator for the college student sample, and results showed that the distress tolerance – insomnia severity relation was only significant for individuals with students with high levels of perceived stress. Lastly, one emotion regulation strategy, cognitive reappraisal, moderated the association between distress tolerance and sleep outcomes among college students but not the MTurk sample wherein it only moderated the association at low and moderate levels but not at high levels of cognitive reappraisal. This research highlights the importance of examining psychological and behavioral factors that help explain the association between distress tolerance and sleep outcomes.

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