A new study says people who sleep for short periods of time and go to bed very late at night experience more negative thoughts than those with regular sleeping hours.

A paper published in the journal Cognitive Therapy and Research says late nights and irregular hours can bring some seriously bad vibrations.

Repetitive negative thinking is the persistent and abstract focus on negative aspects of one’s experience, creating thoughts that seem to repeat over and over in a person’s mind.

Such repetitive negativity can leave a person worrying excessively about the future, delving too deep into the past, and feeling invaded by their own thoughts.

It is often considered a symptom of generalised anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and social anxiety disorder.

But the authors of the new study say the actual hour a person goes to sleep and the duration of that sleep appears to play a role too.

Researchers at Binghamton University asked 100 undergraduate students to complete a set of questionnaires and two computer-based tasks.

They measured how much the students worried, ruminates or obsessed – three meters by which repetitive negative thinking can be measured.

The participants were asked whether they were morning or evening types of people, or if they had sleep-wake schedule skewed towards later hours of the day.

The team found that those who claimed to sleep for shorter periods of time and went to bed later experienced more repetitive negative thoughts than others.

The same was true for those who described themselves as evening people.

“Making sure that sleep is obtained during the right time of day may be an inexpensive and easily disseminable intervention for individuals who are bothered by intrusive thoughts,” Dr Jacob Nota from the Binghamton University’s Department of Psychology said.

It appears that sleep disruption is linked to the development of repetitive negative thinking, and the team therefore believes it might benefit people who are at risk of developing a disorder characterised by such thoughts to focus on routine sleep at regular hours.