Ask a group of people to do something early in the morning and one of the responses you might hear is “I’m not really a morning person.” It’s a phrase that people like to throw around any time something that involves early mornings. What does it really mean though? Let’s find out – using SCIENCE.
Morning people, or morning types are basically those of us who prefer to sleep early and get up early. Evening types, on the other hand, will wake up late and stay up late into the night.
When we were kids, we probably heard the saying early to bed and early to rise makes you healthy, and wealthy, and wise. Well, it doesn’t. Not really. Scientists have found no evidence that following this advice is associated with any health, socioeconomic, or cognitive advantage. It is a good practice though, so if it works for you, then it’s okay.
Evidence that was found is that evening types may actually be slightly more intelligent. In a cognitive test (that was taken in the morning), evening types outperformed morning types on most of the intelligence measures — with significant differences on working memory and processing speed. Interesting.
Finally, morning types were found to generally be more persistent, cooperative, agreeable, conscientious and proactive and less likely to procrastinate.
Do you think these studies are accurate? If so, where do you fall?
