Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found sleep deprived people feel lonely and less likely to interact with others, avoiding close contact.
The study also found that tired people can pass on their feelings of social isolation to others - as if loneliness itself is contagious.
“We humans are a social species. But sleep deprivation can turn us into social lepers,”said senior fellow Matthew Walker, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
“The less you sleep, the less you want to interact with others. In turn, other people perceive you to be more socially repulsive, further increasing the serious social impact of sleep loss.”
"This vicious circle could be a significant contributor to the public health crisis."
According to the Mental Health Foundation, only 38 percent of Britons say they sleep well on a regular basis, and a third say they are chronically sleep deprived.
In a new study, researchers asked 18 young people to watch videos of strangers walking toward them after they had a good night's sleep and then after they had spent a sleepless night. When they didn't like the face on the video, they pressed the button to stop the video.
The researchers found that the sleep-deprived participants kept an approaching person at a significantly greater distance - 18 to 60 percent further - than when they were well rested.
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Brain scans of sleep-deprived people when they watched videos of strangers showed spikes in areas responsible for social rejection, which are activated when people feel that their personal space is being invaded.
It also exhibited activity in a neural circuit known as the "near space network" that is activated when the brain perceives a person as a potential threat.
In a second experiment, scientists asked 1,000 online participants to look at pictures of well-rested and sleep-deprived people and tell them if they would want to spend time with them.
Sleep-deprived people were consistently rated as lonely and less socially desirable. And after watching videos of the tired group, the members also reported feeling unwell.
“It is perhaps no coincidence that the past few decades have seen a marked increase in loneliness and an equally dramatic decrease in sleep duration,” said study lead author Eti Ben Simon, Fellow Emeritus Research Center for Human Sleep Research at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Without enough sleep, we become social outcasts and soon complete loneliness sets in."
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
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