Night owls versus early birds: who is superior according to science? | Well actually

WWe all know that early risers get the worm. But who wants a worm? Not me. For most of my life, I identified as a night owl, getting out of bed as late as possible and not seizing so much, but reluctantly moving through the day.

The work culture in the United States isn’t exactly optimal for night owls. It instead favors CEOs who get up at 4 a.m. and run a marathon while the rest of us hit the snooze button. Yet I have always consoled myself with the idea that night owls are actually more intelligent and creative than their early bird counterparts. Franz Kafka and Thomas Wolfe wrote at bedtime; Bob Dylan recorded at night. Even scientific studies have indicated that this is true.

However, something weird happened. Due to a combination of existential dread, quitting alcohol, and having a small child who wakes me up at an ungodly hour, I started going to bed earlier and earlier. These days, going to bed at 9 p.m. is perfect. The idea of ​​consistently staying up until the wee hours, like before, is now horrible.

This change makes me question everything. Is it really possible for your body clock to change? Am I really becoming an early riser or have I just been forced to follow a schedule dictated by the kids? And if I’m an early riser, does that make me inferior? I’m off on a mission to settle the owl-lark debate once and for all.

What makes a person get up early or get up late?

My first discovery: we can’t do anything for who we are; your optimal bedtime is hardwired into you. “We all have an internal body clock, or circadian rhythm, that controls many physiological outcomes, including alertness levels, sleep, hormone levels, and blood pressure,” says Kristen Knutson, an associate professor at Northwestern University who specializes in sleep research. Your “chronotype,” meanwhile, is your circadian preference: the scientific way of telling whether you’re a morning lark or a night owl. A person with an early chronotype will naturally have an easier time going to bed early than a person with a later chronotype.

Although it is difficult to fundamentally change your chronotype, it changes naturally with age. Anyone with a small child will understand why I no longer bother with an alarm clock: my four-year-old son wakes me abruptly at 5:30 in the morning. But biological clocks lag as puberty arrives, Knutson says: adolescents “have a later chronotype. Then, as we get older, our chronotype tends to drift earlier and earlier. By the time we reach 80, we’re an early type.”

We all go through this same cycle, but from different starting points. “In young adults, morning and evening types can differ by up to about four hours in how their body clock affects their behavior,” says Hans Van Dongen, director of the Center for Sleep and Performance Research at Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane. It’s not clear why these differences exist, but aside from possible evolutionary reasons, there is likely a genetic component. “Children born to evening-type parents are more likely to be evening-types, and the same for morning-types,” says Van Dongen.

Is there evidence that night owls are smarter than early risers?

But back to this very important question: does being a night owl make you more creative and intelligent?

A 2007 study found “that evening aptitude is correlated with the ability to apply divergent thinking strategies to visual content” – a scientific way of saying “more creative.” In a 2009 study titled “Why Night Owls Are Smarter,” psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa compared the bedtimes of 20,745 adolescents to the results of an intelligence test. He found that people with higher intelligence were more likely to be night owls, and hypothesized that this might be because it is “evolutionary” to stay up late.

More recently, researchers at Imperial College London studied British data from more than 26,000 people who took various intelligence tests. The 2024 paper found that those who stay up late have “superior cognitive function” than morning larks.

However, all the experts I spoke with were cautious about drawing definitive links between chronotype and traits like creativity, intelligence, or sociability. Although they make headlines, all of these studies have important limitations.

This 2009 study, for example? Van Dongen notes that “the analysis is based on the time at which individuals choose to go to bed… [and] We cannot rule out the possibility that adolescents with higher IQs choose to study later at night and need more sleep to recover on weekends, or are involved in more or different extracurricular activities.

(I emailed Kanazawa, the study’s lead researcher and an academic at the London School of Economics, for his take on this criticism and received a response saying: “Yes, as if I were talking to someone from the Guardian.(It turns out that Kanazawa, who once claimed that a study showed black women were less attractive than women of other races, is somewhat controversial and certainly not a fan of the Guardian.)

My beliefs about night owls therefore rested on shaky ground. But the stereotypes of creative geniuses burning the midnight oil and early-rising CEOs might still be relevant. “The timing of the biological clock not only determines when people like to go to bed and get up and when they feel most alert during the day,” says Van Dongen. “It also partly determines the types of activities they can participate in and the experiences they are exposed to.” If you naturally get up early, you may find it easier to thrive in a corporate work environment, for example.

The dark side of being a night owl

One thing that sleep experts all seem to agree on is that it’s unhealthy to try to impose a routine that is at odds with your body clock. In fact, it could send you to an early grave.

In 2018, Northwestern’s Knutson co-authored a study that found that night owls have a 10% higher risk of premature death and more health problems than early risers. The study couldn’t determine the underlying reasons, but Knutson notes that the problem might have something to do with “circadian disruption caused by a desynchronization between their internal clock and the external world.” In other words, she says, “it’s difficult for a night owl to live in a world of morning larks.”

Being a night owl can carry other risks. A 2024 study by Stanford Medicine researchers found that staying up late is not good for mental health, regardless of chronotype. The reasons are unclear, but researchers suspect it’s because unhealthy behaviors such as drinking alcohol or eating junk food are more likely to occur late at night.

Similarly, Ana Wenzler, a researcher at the University of Groningen, worked on a recent study that found staying up late is linked to cognitive decline. Wenzler notes that at least 25% of the effect was due to lifestyle rather than anything intrinsic; again, you are more likely to make poor choices late at night.

Can you hack your chronotype?

Even though you can’t change your chronotype, you can try to work in harmony with it. But to achieve this, you must first understand which type you belong to, and this is not always easy. Looking back, I thought I was a night owl for many years simply because of my habits. I was young and I went out a lot. However, once I stopped drinking, my body clock seemed to change.

But it’s not like I wake up to birds like Snow White, ready for the day. In fact, I started to think that I’m neither a morning person nor a night person, but something in between. Which is apparently possible. According to sleep specialist Dr. Michael Breus, a person whose chronotype falls firmly in the middle is a “bear.” And we bears actually dominate: by some estimates, half the population falls into this category.

So how do you know your natural biological clock? Wenzler says the way to determine a person’s chronotype is to measure melatonin levels in their saliva “throughout the day to see when the melatonin level increases.” Melatonin is a hormone that your body secretes to tell you that it’s dark; in the morning, people post it earlier.

Obviously, saliva tests will not be practical for most people. In the absence of a home science lab, Wenzler says, try sleeping without an alarm for a week. Stay away from depressants and stimulants like alcohol and coffee and avoid artificially extending your natural bedtime by scrolling or binge-watching TV, and your body will return to a natural rhythm. You will wake up when your body judges it best.

I would have tried this experiment myself, but you can’t really get rid of your alarm when that alarm is a small child.

Finally, if you’re sure you’re a night owl, but you have to get up early to work (or, in my case, entertain a hyperactive four-year-old in the wee hours), can you change your body clock? Sort of!

“It is possible to change, but usually modestly,” says Matthew P Walker, director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Walker mentions a 2019 study that “increased night owls by about two hours in three weeks using structured routines: morning light, set meal times, exercising earlier, and stopping caffeine. People reported better mood and performance in the morning, although most returned if the changes were not maintained.

“You couldn’t imagine anyone sticking to this diet in perpetuity,” he adds, and these results indicate that people should act in accordance with their chronotype, not against it. “Yes, the one who gets up early can catch the worm. But the second mouse will get the cheese!”

Now try telling your boss that.