Generally people are born with only one chronotype, they’re either an early bird and like to wake up in the morning and get going on all of their daily tasks, or they are a night owl. While you can change this slightly over time, most of this behavior is deeply ingrained in your DNA. Regardless of which one of the two you are, a lark, or a night owl – the suggested amount of sleep you need is roughly the same.
Researchers several years ago started to dive into Benjamin Franklin’s well known adage, “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” they developed a methodology to test and identify if this really was true, and what, if anything, larks gain over night owls or vice versa. this study selected 1,229 people and asked them if they self identify as either an early riser or a night owl and then tracked several different factors including their self reported income, weather or not they hard a car, and a standardized cognitive test.
The results are more surprising than you might guess and certainly do go against Ben Franklin’s maxim. While early risers generally feel morally superior to their late night counterparts, the data in this study and a few others not mentioned here in this article do not support early risers being more smarter or more ready to tackle difficult tasks than their night time brethren.
If you’re interested, you can read the full study here.
