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Early
birds may catch the worm, but night owls have higher IQs. Hey, don't take
my word for it - it's been proven, you know, by science:
Research examining various psychological correlates of circadian type (also known as diurnal preference) has been, over the years, quite expansive. A notable omission within this research program would appear a systematic exploration of the relation between intelligence and morningness–eveningness. The present study redressed this imbalance. 420 participants performed two self-report inventories assessing circadian type, as well as measures of intelligence from two psychometric batteries: CAM-IV and the ASVAB. The results indicate that, contrary to conventional folk wisdom, evening-types are more likely to have higher intelligence scores. This result is discussed in relation to current theories concerning the nature of human cognitive abilities.
The 1999 study: Morningness-eveningness and intelligence: early to bed, early to rise will likely make you anything but wise! by Roberts RD and Kyllonen PC, Dept. of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia - via Barking up the wrong tree
If you’re a night owl, then this is the club for you: a group that meets to work/socialize/hang out for starting at 10 PM at night:
That is what led Amber Lambke and Allan Grinshtein to start a group called the New York Nightowls, a sort of study hall for entrepreneurs, freelancers and software developers who gather at 10 every Tuesday night and stay as late as 4 a.m.
“The goal is to come, get inspired, meet new people and get work done,” said Ms. Lambke, a creative consultant. “It’s six hours of uninterrupted, productive time where you’re surrounded by other creative people doing awesome things.”
Although the New York group has been meeting only since April, the concept is catching on. Others have organized similar weekly gatherings in nearly a dozen cities, including San Francisco, Boston, Stockholm and Melbourne, Australia.
Link | The New York Nightowls website
Why are many teenagers night owls? New findings by Mariana G. Figueiro, a sleep researcher (apparently, there is such a job) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, show that it’s the lack of morning light:
Riding in school buses in the early morning, then sitting in poorly lighted classrooms are the main reasons students have trouble getting to sleep at night, according to new research.
Teenagers, like everyone else, need bright lights in the morning, particularly in the blue wavelengths, to synchronize their inner, circadian rhythms with nature’s cycles of day and night.
If they are deprived of blue light during the morning, they go to sleep an average of six minutes later each night, until their bodies are completely out of sync with the school day, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reported Tuesday in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.
The finding was made by fitting a group of students with goggles that blocked blue light and discovering that their circadian rhythms were significantly affected.
I’m a night owl, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I was told that I could be much more productive if only I switched my sleeping pattern to match that of early risers (I tried, by the way, and all I got was being tired all day long).
Thanks to science, night owls now have the perfect retort to the productivity myth: it turns out that they can actually work longer and focus more than early birds!
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor the brain activity of early birds and night owls who spent two consecutive nights in a sleep laboratory and periodically performed a task that required sustained attention.
The results, reported in the journal Science, suggest that night owls generally outlast early birds in the length of time they can be awake before becoming mentally fatigued.
After 10 hours of being awake, the early birds showed reduced activity in brain areas linked to attention, compared to the night owls. They also felt sleepier and tended to perform more slowly on the task.
On a related note, I’m curious:
[poll=11]
