Amid its constant, nonstop (and pretty good) coverage of the Greek crisis, the Guardian ran a piece today about the effects of sleep deprivation on decision-making. “The Greek government and its eurozone creditors have reached a deal after marathon all-night talks,” it begins, “but can we trust the decisions and deals of sleep-deprived politicians?”

The piece notes that

The talks lasted almost 17 hours through the night and into Monday morning. Politicians emerged to announce the deal looking weary and red-eyed.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the eurozone’s top official, said he did manage to sleep for a few hours. But he also emerged from the talks looking exhausted.

Does this kind of all-night negotiation lead to good decision-making? No.

Prof Michael Chee, director of the centre for cognitive neuroscience at at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore… likens late-night negotiations to torture. “It’s a horrible way to make a decision,” he said, noting photographs of Angela Merkel looking half asleep. He said: “It is kind of last-man-or-woman-standing situation in Brussels. When you’re sleep deprived your ability to process new information drops, your ability to deal with distraction is impaired, and your short-term memory declines. All the fundamental elementals of having to process information rapidly are diminished.”

In fact, the piece implies that it was conscious strategy to wear down the Greek negotiators: they aimed to “break people’s will by keeping them up so they are physically and mentally drained,” Chee says, “so eventually the most insistent person who is standing at the end probably prevails.”

But it sounds to me less like torture than a poorly-played round of prisoner’s dilemma, because both sides stand to lose:

“Your ability to direct and hold attention and depress distractions all declines when you are sleep deprived,” warns Chee. He adds: “Clearly it is very suboptimal to make these very important decisions which affect millions of people. But this pattern of late-night meetings has been going on for years. It’s a tactic of wearing down the other side until they literally capitulate.”

Anders Sandberg’, research fellow at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, goes further. “Sleep-deprived negotiation is irresponsible and harmful,” he warned in a recent blogpost. He points out that sleep deprivation can hamper mental activity as much as drinking alcohol. “If you wouldn’t drink and negotiate, why stay up late and negotiate?” he asks. And he urges politicians to avoid all-night sessions: “When some[one] tries to mess with the agenda in the hope of coming out on top because of exhaustion, refuse to play the game: everybody loses if joint decisions are of low quality.”