Why do some people deny they were snoring loudly. Are they embarrassed or genuinely unaware?

You tell your wife you were snoring last night. She outright denies it, says, “No, I don’t”. Many partners record their partner’s snoring for proof and as a joke, but the other one still refuses to accept it. The reply arrives with surprising confidence. You spent part of the night listening. The other person seems equally convinced that nothing happened. Why does this happen?

We never think about why many of us or others feel the need to lie when we are talking about this habit. Is it just embarrassment or something else?

Many research theories provide an explanation for why we instantly feel the need to defend ourselves. Many people don’t even know about the snoring until the other person points it out.

What did the study find about denying snoring?

A research was done by Roi Westreich who observed 1,913 patients for their overnight sleep in the year 2019. He compared both male and female participants based on the descriptions of their snoring and the sound levels. Many women who claimed they did not snore were found out to be snoring intensely.

The research discovered that women snore as loudly as men. He published his paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 28% of women described themselves as nonsnorers, compared with 6.9% of men.

However, more than one-third of women had severe or very severe snoring intensity during testing.

This finding revealed what the people believed about their snoring and what was actually measured and there was huge gap. However, it doesn’t mean people were deliberately dishonest about their condition.

Many participants reported problems in their sleep. But this doesn’t establish that people with sleep disorders always snore or that women snore more than men. Every individual is different, and parameters vary for them in different conditions.

Why might someone genuinely believe they do not snore?

People can’t observe themselves while they're asleep but they can understand how they behave when they are awake.

So, many people did not know they were making such noise. Again, many partners can sleep through noise, so they may also not realise their partner was snoring until they are actually awake and hearing it.

Therefore, research on snoring can vary and needs reliable parameters to be studied thoroughly. A self- assessment is difficult in these cases. It also questions how closely a partner’s report matches objective sound measurements.

A complaint therefore deserves attention, but disagreement does not automatically mean one person is lying.

Imagine someone saying, “I slept through the night, so I couldn’t have been that loud.” Their memory describes what they experienced. It does not measure what somebody else heard.

Can embarrassment make it harder for a person to admit to their snoring?

Yes, this can be one way to explain why the person generally denies about their sleeping behavior.

Psychologists Mark Leary and Robin Kowalski’s researched impression management and their study offered a reasonable explanation. The study described on how people wish to change the impressions others form of them when it is generally negative or mockery.

According to a 1990 paper published by Leary and Kowalski, people are impacted when they feel others have a wrong impression about them. They want to fight back when that image clashes with how they want to be seen.

People can be embarrassed about their snoring usually when it is used in inside jokes between family and friends or when they are being compared to someone.

Imagine being told at breakfast, in front of friends, “You sounded like a tractor.”

The response may focus on rejecting that description rather than understanding the sleep problem. While the above example explains the impression management theory, it is not exactly related to being embarrassed for snoring, A person can also feel embarrassed while answering honestly.

What is motivated reasoning and how does it explain this habit?

Motivated reasoning was studied by Psychologist Ziva Kunda in the year 1990. This study explains their habits by providing a reason which they can accept.

For example, someone might say, “I only made that noise because I had a cold.”

A cold could be relevant but it can be an excuse. But motivated reasoning shows that one might prefer having a cold than being told that they are someone who snores.

They like this distinction as the conclusion is acceptable to them. While Kunda’s review can be used as one way to explain the snoring, its main focus was not based on this.