Morning person or late night person: a chronotype study

Psychology Today has documented a recent study on chronotypes – whether people are a morning person or a late night person and who they attract as partners.

Many studies have been previously conducted on personality traits, but there has been limited studies on chronotypes. Chronotypical behaviour is a preference for rising early or going to bed late. Morning people are called larks (and they reach peak performance early in the day) and late night people are called owls (who perform well in the afternoon or evening). 

However, there is a continuum, and most people cluster around the middle – a neutral chronotype. Sometimes work dictates whether people are early risers or late sleepers, according to shift-work or profession. 

The study by Polish psychologist Paulina Jocz and her colleagues at the University of Warsaw recruited 91 heterosexual couples (182 people) who had been together and sexually active for at least 6 months.  

The study showed that there is a biological component to chronotypes. Chronotypes change with age – young children tend to be larks, and shift to become owls as adults, and back to larks in later adulthood. The study showed a gender difference too, with more females tending to be larks and more males tending to be owls. 

Overall, the study found that health outcomes were better for larks than for owls. Larks had fewer health issues, less incidences of depression, and reported higher levels of subjective well-being. 

Larks, morning people, tended to prefer long-term relationships, whereas owls, night people, tended to prefer short-term relationships. Larks tended to marry larks, and owls tended to marry owls. 

There were no differences in the number of happy versus unhappy couples between the participants, nor were there any differences in the reported quality and satisfaction of their sex lives. There were also no significant differences in the time that people preferred to have sex – i.e. in the morning or late at night – between larks and owls. 

However, there were gender differences, and the differences were likely to be affected by work routines. Male larks preferred sex in the morning and male owls preferred sex in the evening. Female larks and female owls preferred sex right before going to sleep.

The study was limited in the number of participants, their sexual orientation, their background and race, and their professions (and did not take into account couples not working), showing no effective or significant results on several research questions and hypotheses. More research is needed.  

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).