I’m certifiably a night-owl and definitely not a morning-person (to the point where I employ licensed caregivers to yell at me in the morning - my psychologist recommended it!) - but I wouldn’t attribute it in any way to being “social” - for some reason I just find it significantly easier to be focused, motivated, and productive after 6pm than any time before.<p>I used to attribute it to my horrible procrastination and how only in the night before a school or uni homework deadline I’d crank something out out of desperation, but it’s still an ongoing habit with my current day-job (er... night-job?) where deadlines aren’t really a thing (I love my boss) but I still feel most-productive in the evenings.<p>I’m ASD+ADHD[1] too - and I see similar things with other people I know with similar diagnoses. I believe they’re all related.<p>[1]: I really dislike the “ADHD” label because I’m not hyperactive in any way - or resemble stereotypical symptoms - if I could rename whatever it is I’ve got I’d call it “Motivation deficit” or similar.
It is to be noted that they found "evening types" people had greater grey matter volume in an area of the brain called the precuneus, NOT in the whole brain.<p>Also it is not clear whether more grey matter makes the individuals "evening types" or the other way around. This study does not discuss that. So jumping to theories about personality traits seems quite far fetched.<p>Evening types were younger than morning types in their sample of studied people. It is known that there is a decrease in grey matter volume between adulthood and old age, whereas white matter volume was found to increase from age 19-40, and decline after this age (Bartzokis et al.). So it is not surprising that their data showed evening types (younger people) had higher grey matter than morning types (older people).
I thought it was a study about birds and I was confused why they were trying to apply all these human traits in the article. I then came over here and downvoted two commentors for also confusingly talking about birds.<p>I much prefer the original title of the study: Diurnal Preference and Grey Matter Volume in a Large Population of Older Adults: Data from the UK Biobank
Not all of it is without choice. I used to be a night owl. I woke around 10am, worked from 11am until 1am or sometimes later. The invariant was that I generally slept between 9-10 hours.<p>I also suffered from seasonal affective disorder and winter time depression with short days in Canada. To help with this I started spending time outside during the early part of the day and generally ate my lunch outside if possible. This helped somewhat. This switch to prioritizing sunlight exposure also made me consider that sleeping while the sun was up and working in the dark was a strange choice.<p>For more than the last 25 years I've intentionally time shifted to ensure that I don't waste daylight hours sleeping. If I'd follow my natural sleep rhythms I'd almost surely drift later, I'd we waking several hours after sunrise and working in to the evening. Even though I have to have some discipline about using an alarm clock and only allowing myself 1 day a week to wake naturally it is not actually that hard because I do it consistently. I could also easily stay up late one night, but getting up at the same time every day makes staying up harder.<p>My intentional time shifting isn't that dramatic of a "hacking" of my natural inclination. It has made a difference with seasonal depression and I've found that social activity works better with a time schedule aligned to daylight hours. It is easy to read a study like this and conclude that personal choice plays no part in determining your "fate". You have some flexibility and choice to do what you need to do. An inclination is not an outcome.
so they say that having little grey matter (like early birds) correlates with "empathy, agreeableness and cooperation."
But maybe early birds are only so empathatic and agreeable because their day/night cycle is not always disrupted by how the world is set up? Whereas us grumpy night owls having a case of a bad monday morning is maybe just because we have to stand up early and don't want to?
Based on my own night-owl life, I'd suggest that might be because people might be more sensitive to social interaction (thus these interactions being more disruptive), and thus need the calm of the night to pursue their hobbies and readings. Edit: that does not resist deeper analysis: one can as well evade social interactions by studying in the very early morning after getting up.
Correlation or causation? Do people that get up earlier have to work more? Possibly live in more difficult conditions? Maybe are more addicted to caffeine? Just kinda spitballing here.
"We also know that reduced volume in this area has been associated with empathy, agreeableness and cooperation, so it ties nicely with behavioural data that suggests early chronotypes tend to engage in more pro-social behaviours than evening types."<p>As a night owl, I hate when generic observations are made about us. I hate it even more when they're backed by scientific research and fit perfectly.
> Eveningness, meanwhile, has previously been shown to be associated with an increased risk of psychiatric disorders and personality traits such a neuroticism.<p>Hey, I resemble that remark. I think it's also interesting that it's _more_ grey matter that causes it, usually I think I hear of many brain issues coming from a lack of matter or deterioration in an area.
Here is an interesting point for discussion that I hope others may chime in on. What is the difference between being a night owl and experiencing jet lag? With enough discipline, one can recover from jet lag in a matter of days. Why then do some people believe themselves condemned to be a night owl or early bird?
I have been taking my temperature every day, maybe a few times a day for over a month. I was just curious to see how helpful this is related to COVID-19. Anyway, what I did see, for what it is worth, was my temperature change by a lot over the course of a day, by over a degree. And I can guess what my temperature will be based on how energetic I feel. I am not a morning person and the temperature is higher later in the day, peaking from around 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. It returns to around the wakeup temperature at maybe 11:00 PM or midnight. I am guess the temperature profile for a morning person would look different.