Narrator:        This is Science Today. During the course of a relationship, spouses and other romantic partners often complain about feeling unappreciated. And now a study suggests that sleep deprivation may play a hidden role by causing partners to feel taken for granted. University of California, Berkeley psychologist Amie Gordon, who led the study, says their findings shed light on the emotional interdependence of sleep partners.

Gordon:          This fact that one person's sleep influences the other. People tend to sleep worse when they have a partner there that their objective sleep is worse because you get woken up by your partner and things like that and that's problematic.

Narrator:        Gordon says their findings, while preliminary, found that poor sleep was linked to feeling less grateful towards one's partner the next day.

Gordon:          We're really excited about pursuing this further and really understanding the social consequences of sleep - to help make social psychologists more aware of how these basic biological processes like sleep are affecting how we're interacting with other people.

Narrator:        For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.