Unexpected Traits That Psychologists Notice About People Who Wake Up Early

We all know those bright, chipper folks who wake up early in the morning, raring to start the day. Or maybe we're morning people ourselves. The conventional wisdom is that people who wake up early have cheerful and sunny dispositions. What's less well known is that they are more likely to be conscientious and satisfied with their lives, to get better grades, and to have less anxiety, depression, and stress than evening people, who prefer staying up late. 

"Morningness" (preference for waking up early) or "eveningness" (preference for staying up late) have also been linked to specific personality traits. Behavioral psychologists often use the Five Factor Model of personality domains to study those personality traits. These five domains are Extraversion, Openness (to experience), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism, and studies have found that morning people are more agreeable and conscientious, while being less extroverted and less open to experience. What's more, each of the domains have subdomains; for example, Conscientiousness encompasses Competence, Order, Dutifulness, Achievement Striving, Self-discipline, and Deliberation. All of these subdomains except for Achievement Striving were also associated with morningness.

By contrast, evening people are more likely to be extroverted and open to experience, which can confer social advantages or incline them towards particular careers and activities. That said, eveningness has also been associated with mental disorders such as mood disorders, depression, ADHD, and sleep disorders.

Only 10% to 15% of us are true morning or evening people. The rest of us are somewhere in between, with both morning and evening traits. It turns out that whether we gravitate to morningness or eveningness or fall somewhere in between is partially based on our genes, specifically a set of genes called "clock genes." These genes reside in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), located in the hypothalamus area of the brain. The SCN is sensitive to light; therefore, the clock genes are influenced by the day-night cycle. The clock genes control the release of hormones, as well as the body's digestion and temperature. An important hormone is melatonin, which tells your brain when to go to sleep and when to wake up. The hypothalamus controls the timing of melatonin release and, in turn, melatonin influences the activity of the hypothalamus. 

Another factor influencing morningness or eveningness tendencies is age. Most children are morning people, while adolescents tend more towards eveningness, reaching maximum eveningness around age 20. Later in life, after age 50, morningness starts becoming more dominant again. (Although teenagers are more inclined to staying up late, they do still need a minimum amount of sleep, though, and they aren't exempt from the question of how much sleep you really need.) Gender may also play a role in determining morningness or eveningness. Girls and women are more likely to be morning people than boys and men. 

Several studies have reported links between morningness and higher cognitive ability and, conversely, between eveningness and lower cognitive ability (the ability to think and comprehend). However, a large study in Learning and Individual Differences suggested that eveningness may actually be associated with higher cognitive ability but also with lower academic achievement. Another study in men aged 18 to 25 years reported that evening people had better cognitive ability (measured via brainwave analysis and cognitive tests) in the evening, while morning people had better cognitive ability in the morning. Since academic tests are usually administered during the day, it's tempting to point to this as the main reason why evening people tend to have lower grades.

However, something else could be going on as well. A study in university students showed that morning-type students performed better on tests than evening-type students, regardless of the time of the classes and tests. The researchers attributed the difference to the evening-type students being more sleep deprived because of the early schedule of most schools. Just like these students, if you are an evening person, it may feel impossible to wake up to your alarm clock in the morning.

Both morning and evening people can make behavioral adjustments to enhance their lives: Morning people can perform more important tasks earlier in the day, while evening people can reserve these tasks for later in the day. Timing coffee consumption might also matter more than you think, and restricting coffee to the morning rather than throughout the day may also help to facilitate better sleep.