PSY 108 Module 6 Project Two Problem and Research Paper example

Project Two: The Last Hour of the Day, a Bedtime Phone Habit and the Psychology Behind It

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

PSY 108: Introduction to Psychology

Module Six Project Two

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Project Two: The Last Hour of the Day, a Bedtime Phone Habit and the Psychology Behind It

The Problem

The problem for this project belongs to Dana, the composite working adult student used throughout this course: who works in medical billing, is raising two children and is now partway through her first college term. Dana studies after the children are in bed, usually finishing between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. Then, instead of going to sleep, she takes her phone to bed "for a few minutes" of social media and video. Her alarm is set for 6:15 a.m. She reports being tired most mornings, irritable by late afternoon and unable to concentrate on weekend study sessions. She believes she lacks willpower. This paper argues that the problem is better understood as a learned habit supported by its environment, which psychology can explain and help change.

Baseline: A Two-Week Sleep Diary

Before looking at research, the problem needed to be measured. Dana kept a simple diary for 14 nights, recording when she got into bed, when she put the phone down, when she thinks she fell asleep and how rested she felt in the morning on a scale from 1 to 5. Table 1 summarizes the results.

Table 1

Dana's Two-Week Sleep Diary

Note. Composite diary data. Sleep times are self-estimates.

What the Diary Shows

The diary makes the problem specific. Dana does not have trouble falling asleep once the phone is down; she has trouble putting the phone down. On weeknights she averages about an hour of phone use in bed and roughly five and a half hours of sleep, well below what she needs. She then sleeps longer on weekends, which shifts her body clock later and makes Sunday night even harder. The problem is not the hour she goes to bed but the hour she spends there awake with a screen.

Why It Matters

Expert recommendations advise seven to nine hours of sleep for adults of Dana's age (Hirshkowitz et al., 2015). Falling short regularly matters especially for students. Hershner and Chervin (2014) reviewed research on sleepiness among college students and found that insufficient and irregular sleep was common and was associated with lower grades, a higher risk of academic failure, poorer mood and a greater risk of drowsy driving. Sleep is also when the body recovers from stress, so Dana's short nights connect to the stress she described in earlier projects.

Research on Bedtime Phone Use

Research on adults suggests Dana's pattern is common and consequential. A survey of adults in Belgium found that using a mobile phone in bed was associated with a later time of falling asleep, poorer sleep quality, more symptoms of insomnia and more fatigue (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2016). Because the study was a survey, it cannot prove that phone use caused poor sleep; people who already sleep poorly might use their phones more in bed. But the association fits Dana's diary closely, and it suggests that the phone is displacing sleep rather than helping her unwind.

General sleep hygiene advice, such as avoiding screens and caffeine before bed, is widely repeated. Irish et al. (2015) reviewed the evidence and found that individual recommendations were generally associated with better sleep, but that their direct effects in the general population were largely untested. That finding is a caution for Project Three: handing Dana a list of sleep tips will probably not change much by itself, and the plan will need to target how Dana's specific habit works.

Psychological Principles That Explain the Habit

Behavioral psychology explains why the habit persists. Scrolling delivers unpredictable rewards, a funny video, a message from a friend, and behavior reinforced on an unpredictable schedule is especially resistant to stopping. The bed has also become a cue: through repeated pairing, getting into bed now prompts reaching for the phone. The principle of stimulus control suggests that changing the cues, for example by charging the phone outside the bedroom, can weaken the habit more effectively than trying to resist it.

Cognitive psychology adds two principles. First, Dana's belief that she simply lacks willpower is an explanation that offers no plan; reframing the problem as a habit shifts attention to strategies. Second, planning in a specific form helps. Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) found in a meta-analysis that implementation intentions, plans in the form "when situation X arises, I will do Y," made people noticeably more likely to reach their goals, with an overall effect in the medium-to-large range. A plan such as "when I close my laptop, I will plug my phone in on the kitchen counter" links the new behavior to a reliable cue.

Research on habit formation sets realistic expectations. Lally et al. (2010) followed people forming new daily habits and found it took a median of 66 days for the behavior to become close to automatic, with wide variation, and that missing an occasional day did not undo progress. Dana's plan should therefore run for at least two months and should treat slips as normal.

Other Explanations Considered

Before settling on the habit explanation, I weighed two alternatives. The first is that Dana has a sleep disorder such as insomnia. Her diary argues against it: on nights when she put the phone down early, she reported falling asleep within about fifteen minutes. If that changes once the phone habit is addressed, she should talk to a doctor. The second is that the phone time is her only personal time in a day filled by work, children and study, and that she is protecting it. That explanation has real weight. Some researchers describe this pattern as putting off bedtime to reclaim free time, and it means the plan cannot simply remove the phone; it will need to give Dana a better form of personal time, earlier in the evening or in a way that does not cost her sleep.

Next Steps

Project Three will build an action plan from these principles: changing the cues in Dana's bedroom, forming implementation intentions for the end of study time, replacing scrolling with a brief wind-down routine she enjoys, keeping a steadier schedule on weekends and continuing the diary so she can see whether her sleep and restedness change.

References

Exelmans, L., & Van den Bulck, J. (2016). Bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults. Social Science & Medicine, 148, 93-101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.11.037

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1

Hershner, S. D., & Chervin, R. D. (2014). Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college students. Nature and Science of Sleep, 6, 73-84. https://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S62907

Hirshkowitz, M., Whiton, K., Albert, S. M., Alessi, C., Bruni, O., DonCarlos, L., Hazen, N., Herman, J., Katz, E. S., Kheirandish-Gozal, L., Neubauer, D. N., O'Donnell, A. E., Ohayon, M., Peever, J., Rawding, R., Sachdeva, R. C., Setters, B., Vitiello, M. V., Ware, J. C., & Adams Hillard, P. J. (2015). National Sleep Foundation's sleep time duration recommendations: Methodology and results summary. Sleep Health, 1(1), 40-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010

Irish, L. A., Kline, C. E., Gunn, H. E., Buysse, D. J., & Hall, M. H. (2015). The role of sleep hygiene in promoting public health: A review of empirical evidence. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 22, 23-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2014.10.001

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674