What a 1996 Experiment With Sousa Marches Says About Trying to Fall Asleep Fast

Sometimes. In a 1996 experiment at the University of Virginia, normal sleepers told to fall asleep as quickly as possible took longer to fall asleep than sleepers given no such goal, but only when their minds were kept busy. When the setting was calm, the same instruction helped.

What did Ansfield, Wegner and Bowser actually test?

The paper is “Ironic effects of sleep urgency,” Behaviour Research and Therapy 34(7):523-531. According to the abstract (indexed in PubMed, which I read through Europe PMC), normal sleepers were told either to “fall asleep as quickly as they could” or to “fall asleep whenever they desired.” Each group heard either John Philip Sousa marches, a high mental load, or sleep-conducive new age music, a low mental load. The measure was sleep onset latency, the time taken to fall asleep.

What were the results?

Two findings, both from the abstract. Under low load, participants trying to fall asleep quickly did so faster than those with no urgency. Under high load, onset took longer for the urgent group than for the others. The authors read the high-load result as consistent with Daniel Wegner’s ironic process theory (Psychological Review, 1994), in which an effort to control the mind runs a monitoring process that can pull in the opposite direction when attention is taxed.

Does this mean urgency to sleep backfires?

Only under a particular condition: a mind already occupied. The urgency instruction was not harmful in itself, and the paper’s own low-load result shows it speeding things up. For the broader clinical literature on sleep effort in insomnia, see this earlier article.

What does it imply for trying to fall asleep faster tonight?

My inference, not the authors’: the pattern predicts that “I must be asleep in ten minutes” does worst on a night when the head is full (a deadline tomorrow, a loud argument replaying) and fine on a quiet night. The study did not test home bedrooms, so treat this as a hypothesis.

And for setting an early alarm?

The abstract mentions no alarm and no bedtime deadline, so the study cannot say whether an early alarm backfires. If one does, the route would be the same inference: counting the hours left adds urgency to a mind that is already busy. People who dread a missed alarm describe a related problem, covered in a piece on alarm anxiety.

What can’t this study tell us?

• It is a single laboratory experiment from 1996. I could not access the full text, so I can’t report its sample size, participants’ ages or whether sleep was measured by polysomnography or self-report. Check the DOI before citing numbers.
• The abstract says “normal sleepers,” not people with insomnia, so it does not show that insomnia works this way.
• The high-load condition (marches) is a lab manipulation, and the abstract does not say how long it lasted or how many nights were studied.

Full citation: Ansfield ME, Wegner DM, Bowser R. Behav Res Ther. 1996;34(7):523-531. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(96)00031-9.