Adults and children who report frequent expression of anger and aggression also report sleep disruption. Although these findings suggest an important relationship, it is unknown whether this link extends to real sleep behavior, what aspects of sleep and angry and aggressive tendencies play the most important role, and whether stress and constraint contribute to their connection. To address these questions, the current study used a large scale dataset from the Biomarker Project of the Midlife in the United States Longitudinal Study of Health and Well-Being (MIDUS II) to investigate these relations with respect to both objectively (actigraphy) and subjectively (daily diary) measured sleep. Results indicated that individuals who are quick to anger and with poor anger control had worse objectively measured sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency, and sleep fragmentation. Stress and constraint did not contribute to these relations. In addition, all of individuals’ anger tendencies related to subjectively measured indices of sleep quality; however, these relations were largely accounted for by stress and constraint. The links between these anger tendencies and sleep illuminate the larger growing body of evidence showing that sleep disruption influences aggression and aggressive tendencies
