Differential influence of asynchrony in early and late chronotypes on convergent thinking

ABSTRACT

Eveningness preference (late chronotype) was previously associated with different personality dimensions and thinking styles that were linked to creativity, suggesting that evening-type individuals tend to be more creative than the morning-types. Nevertheless, empirical data on the association between chronotype and creative performance is scarce and inconclusive. Moreover, cognitive processes related to creative thinking are influenced by other factors such as sleep and the time of testing. Therefore, our aim was to examine convergent and divergent thinking abilities in late and early chronotypes, taking into consideration the influence of asynchrony (optimal versus nonoptimal testing times) and sleep quality. We analyzed the data of 36 evening-type and 36 morning-type young, healthy adults who completed the Compound Remote Associates (CRAs) as a convergent and the Just suppose subtest of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as a divergent thinking task within a time interval that did (n = 32) or did not (n = 40) overlap with their individually defined peak times. Chronotype was not directly associated with creative performance, but in case of the convergent thinking task an interaction between chronotype and asynchrony emerged. Late chronotypes who completed the test at subjectively nonoptimal times showed better performance than late chronotypes tested during their “peak” and early chronotypes tested at their peak or off-peak times. Although insomniac symptoms predicted lower scores in the convergent thinking task, the interaction between chronotype and asynchrony was independent of the effects of sleep quality or the general testing time. Divergent thinking was not predicted by chronotype, asynchrony or their interaction. Our findings indicate that asynchrony might have a beneficial influence on convergent thinking, especially in late chronotypes.

KEYWORDS:

• Compound remote associate task
• convergent thinking
• divergent thinking
• morningness-eveningness
• sleep

Acknowledegments

The authors would like to thank Vivien Pálosi for her assistance in data collection.

Funding

This research was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA/PD 115432) of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office. Péter Simor was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

Supplementary material available online

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA/PD 115432) of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office. Péter Simor was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.