Complex Numbers

The Second Mouse

Here's another opportunity for me to rail against the smug supposed superiority of wormcatchers.

    Why Waking Up Earlier Isn't Necessarily Better  

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with waking up early, as I've noted before. It's the whole "turning it into a moral mandate" thing that bugs me, and the utter disregard for those of us with less common sleep schedules.

Still, this article (from, ironically, Time) makes a few good points I hadn't considered

A favorite trope of sleep research is to divide the entire human population into two cute, feathered categories: early birds (also called larks) and night owls. Often, these studies link people’s natural sleep patterns—called their chronotype—with some waking behavior or personality trait.

Kind of like astrology.

Research says that early birds are happier, more punctual, do better in school, and share more conservative morals. Night owls are more impulsive, angry, and likely to become cyberbullies; they have shoddier diets and, most critically, are worse at kicking soccer balls.

"Research" done by larks. This is like those studies that conclude cats are psychopaths, which, when you look into the authors, you find they're all dogs. Well, dog people, at least.

But can the population really be categorized so neatly? Or is the research painting an incomplete and overly moralistic picture?

No. Yes.

A study published May 24 in PLOS ONE by a group of Polish researchers takes a fresh look at the long-established link between being an early riser and being conscientious by examining a separate but potentially important variable that might underlie the link: being religious. The team found that people who woke up earlier tended to score higher on all dimensions of religiosity, leading them to conclude that being religious could help explain why early risers are more conscientious and more satisfied overall.

In other words: correlation, not causation. Not that religion is any kind of predictor of a person's morality, either.

“I think most people would recognize that, in reality, [chronotype is] more of a continuous type of variable,” says Brian Gunia, a sleep researcher, professor, and associate dean at Johns Hopkins’ Carey Business School. It exists on a spectrum: not everyone is always one or the other. But so much research uses this binary classification because people are usually able to self-identify that way, Gunia says.

And there's that. Life is rarely binary. Is someone who wakes up at 6:59 am a lark, while someone who wakes up at 7 is an owl? I have similar issues with how "generations" are labeled.

The bias that people who rise early are morally superior to evening people doesn’t just loom large in scientific research. It’s at the very heart of the U.S.’s founding principles of industry and hard work, says Declan Gilmer, a PhD student at the University of Connecticut who studies workplace psychology. “If someone gets up at 6 a.m., and they show up at work early, they’re viewed potentially as more committed,” he says.

Founding principles, my ass. Also, one can also show one's commitment to helping one's boss buy a second yacht by staying late.

“Some of the better work in the topic area has been trying to identify the genes that are most tightly linked to morningness and eveningness,” he says—genes that, if understood, could open the door to a more nuanced view of the topic.

Especially since genes alone can't give you the full picture. There are other factors, including environmental.

Very few chronotype studies include information about the time of day during which the research was conducted, but Gunia’s research has found that this seemingly simple factor can change data a fair bit. In a 2014 study of chronotype and ethical behavior, for example, “we found that morning people are most ethical in the morning, and evening people are most ethical in the evening, so maybe it’s more of a fit between chronotype and time [of day] than it is this idea that morning people are better or worse,” Gunia says. Studies that don’t take time of day into account “are missing half the equation.”

That seems so blindingly obvious to me that I should be surprised no one's thought of it, and yet, I'm not, really. I know if I had to wake up at 6 am to go be a guinea pig in a chronotype study, I'd be grumpy as fuck.

Humans don’t always fit neatly into one of two categories, even when it comes to their sleep preferences.

Duh. For instance, I'm biphasic. While I tend to go to sleep late, I also sleep most late afternoons. One of the great things about being me is that I'm usually able to go to sleep when I'm tired, and wake up when I'm not. This is the pattern I fell into, but even when I had to simulate being a wormcatcher, my gas tank would run out in the afternoons.

I'm not saying this makes me superior. It also doesn't make me inferior.

You don’t have to be a morning lark or a night owl. You can be any kind of bird you like—there are plenty of worms to go around.

The whole wormcatcher thing always bugged me anyway. Worms? Eugh. That's why I latched onto the alternative phrase: The second mouse gets the cheese.

Mmm. Cheese.