God save the owls! Religiosity moderates the relationship between morningness-eveningness and depressive symptoms

ABSTRACT

Studies show that eveningness preference and depressive symptoms are positively related. However, little is known about possible factors that could reduce this association. In the present study, we examine the moderating effects of religiosity on the relationship between eveningness and depressive symptoms. The main analyses were conducted on a group of 606 individuals (300 women and 306 men) aged 18 to 36 years (M = 29.00, SD = 4.95). The participants completed the Composite Scale of Morningness, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and the Centrality of Religiosity Scale. Our results confirmed earlier findings that eveningness was positively related to depressive symptoms. The magnitude of this association decreased with higher religiosity. This lead to the conclusion that religiosity may act as a protective factor against elevated depressive symptoms among evening-oriented individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronotype
• morningness-eveningness
• depressive symptoms
• religiosity
• alpha-stability

Author Contributions

Joanna Gorgol: conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, visualization, project administration.

Maciej Stolarski: writing - original draft, writing – review and editing, supervision.

Paweł Łowicki: writing - original draft, writing – review and editing.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, from the funds awarded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the form of a subsidy for the maintenance and development of research potential in 2022501-D125-01-1250000 zlec. 5011000190 .