The moderating role of personality traits in the relationship between chronotype and depressive symptoms

ABSTRACT

Due to the undeniably morning orientation of the social clock, the evening chronotype can be associated with negative consequences, both at the affective and cognitive levels. Evening-oriented individuals are more susceptible to affective disorders, show poorer educational achievements and consume stimulants more often than morning-oriented individuals. However, little is known about potential factors that may attenuate or amplify these negative emotional consequences of the evening preference. Thus, our aim was to examine whether personality traits interplay with chronotype in predicting depressive symptoms. We assessed the Big Five and the Big Two personality traits, morningness-eveningness and depressive symptoms in an online sample of 913 Polish individuals (468 females, 445 males), aged 18–35 (M = 26.34, SD = 5.15). Eveningness, higher neuroticism, lower conscientiousness and lower alpha-stability were associated with higher depressive symptoms. The magnitude of the association between eveningness and depressive symptoms decreased with higher conscientiousness and alpha-stability, as well as with lower neuroticism. In conclusion, high neuroticism, low conscientiousness and low alpha-stability increase the risk of depressive symptoms, particularly among evening chronotypes. The patients’ chronotypes and personality traits should be taken into account in both the prevention and diagnostics of depression.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronotype
• morningness-eveningness
• personality
• depressive symptoms
• Big Five
• Big Two

Author contributors

Joanna Gorgol designed the study, acquired both data and funding, and drafted the initial manuscript. Joanna Gorgol, Wojciech Waleriańczyk and Maciej Stolarski analyzed the data and revised the manuscript. All authors have read and accepted the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Excellence initiative – research university (2020-2026) program organized by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education [project number: PSP 501-D125-20-0004316].