On which side of the bed is it better to sleep?

Sleeping on the right side of the bed makes us grumpy.

That's the conclusion of a recent U.K. study. In other research, scientists and psychologists have carefully examined sleeping positions as a means of revealing personality traits and analyzing non-verbal communication.

It's better to sleep on the left side of the bed if we want to get the day off to a good start, according to the findings of a survey published on November 23 by the bed manufacturing firm Sealy UK. The brand questioned 1,000 people across the country to find out what impact our sleeping habits in bed had on our mood, career, and outlook on life.

The study revealed that people who usually slept on the left side of the bed were eight per cent more likely to have friends and like their work, four per cent more inclined to wake up in a good mood and 9.5 per cent more likely to have a more positive outlook on life.

Conversely, those who slept on the right side of the bed were nine per cent more inclined to prefer their own company, seven per cent more likely to get up in bad mood, five per cent more likely to be pessimistic and three per cent more likely to dislike their job.

The study also highlighted Britons' marked preference for sleeping alone, as 36 per cent admitted to doing this, in many cases because of a snoring spouse (one in two complained about this), while 1 in 10 voluntarily sleeps with a child or an animal in their bed.

Many researchers and psychologists have also sought to examine sleep habits as a means of revealing the state of a relationship.

One example is Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K. who studied the way in which 1,000 people slept. The researcher, who presented the conclusions of his study at Edinburgh Science Festival in Scotland in 2014, demonstrated a link between the quality of a couple's relationship and physical contact.

Of those questioned, 86.5 per cent who maintained a maximum distance of 2.5 cm from their spouse were said to have a good relationship.

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