TO The favorite trope of sleep research is to divide the entire human population into two cute feathery categories: early risers (also called larks) and night owls. Often these studies link people’s natural sleep patterns, called chronotypes, to some waking behavior or personality trait.
It doesn’t take long to see which team comes out on top most often. (Hint: it’s the one that catches the worm.) Research says that early birds are happierfurther punctual, do better in schooland share a more conservative morality. Night owls are more impulsive, angryand is likely to become cyber bullies; they have poor quality diets and, most critically, are worst kicking soccer balls.
But can you really categorize the population so clearly? Or does the research paint an incomplete and overly self-righteous picture?
TO study published on May 24 in PLUS ONE by a group of Polish researchers takes a new look at the long-standing bond between being an early riser and being conscientious by examining a separate but potentially important variable that could underlie the link: being religious. The team found that people who got up earlier tended to score higher on all dimensions of religiosity, leading them to conclude that being religious might help explain why early risers are more conscientious and satisfied. in general. “Morning” could be closely related to piety, partly because certain religions practice morning prayer, so religion could be driving the link between getting up early and being mindful.
Religion, of course, is just one little-examined variable that may be contributing to the link between sleep and waking behavior. There are countless more, which suggests we’re probably thinking too much about the morning bird/night owl divide, in research and in real life. “I think most people would recognize that (the chronotype is) actually more of a type of continuous variable,” says Brian Gunia, a sleep researcher, professor, and associate dean at the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business. It exists on a spectrum: not everyone is always one or the other. But a lot of research uses this binary classification because people can usually self-identify that way, Gunia says.
Read more: Individual circadian clocks could be the next frontier of personalized medicine
The bias that early risers are morally superior to late risers doesn’t just loom large in scientific research. It’s at the heart of America’s industry and hard work founding principles, says Declan Gilmer, a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut studying occupational psychology. “If someone gets up at 6 am and gets to work early, they are considered potentially more committed,” he says.
For his 2018 master’s thesis, Gilmer asked people to imagine themselves as managers and review employee requests for easily adaptable schedule changes based on a number of factors. She found that people acting as managers rarely treated chronotype-related scheduling requests, such as asking to start and end the workday later when said time did not interfere with meetings, as legitimate. And when late-night employees made such requests, they viewed them much more negatively, even when they were just as productive as the early risers. other recent investigation published in the magazine behavioral sleep medicine found that people “perceived night owls as significantly more lazy, unhealthy, undisciplined, immature, creative, and young,” the study authors write.
However, a person’s sleep preference is far from fixed. Although it has biological and genetic roots and “doesn’t vary from month to month or season to season,” says Fogel, “we know that age is really important.” The chronotype can change as you get older, he says, which means research needs to control for things like age. “Some of the best work in the subject area has been trying to identify the genes that are most closely related to morning and afternoon,” he says, genes that, if understood, could open the door to a more nuanced view of the subject. .
Perhaps the most important reason not to place too much faith in the “research-backed” moral superiority of morning birds is that aspects of their personality (such as how hopeful and creative you are) and your own physiology (such as how in focus you are) that are supposedly linked to your chronotype change throughout the day. Very few chronotype studies include information about the time of day during which the research was conducted, but Gunia’s research has found that this seemingly simple factor can change the data quite a bit. in a 2014 study of chronotype and ethical behavior, for example, “we found that morning people are more ethical in the morning, and evening people are more ethical at night, so perhaps there is more agreement between chronotype and time (of day) than this idea that morning people are better or worse is,” says Gunia. Studies that do not take the time of day into account “miss half the equation.”
Humans don’t always fit neatly into one of two categories, even when it comes to their sleep preferences. As researchers work to get a more individualized look, remember: It doesn’t have to be a lark or a night owl. You can be any type of bird you like, there are plenty of worms for everyone.
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