The moderating role of personality traits in the associations between seasonal fluctuations in chronotype and depressive symptoms

ABSTRACT

Recent research provided evidence that the well-established association between morningness-eveningness and depressive symptoms may be moderated by personality features – conscientiousness and neuroticism. In the present study, we attempted to broaden these findings using a longitudinal design. We hypothesized that these personality traits may influence the degree to which morningness-eveningness and depressiveness covary in time. Participants (n = 380) filled measures of morningness-eveningness, the Big Five personality, and depressive symptoms twice, in December and in June. Consistent with previous results, we observed a significant seasonal shift towards morningness and lower depressive symptoms from December to June. Seasonal shifts in chronotype and depressive symptoms were interrelated: a seasonal shift towards morningness was associated with a decrease in depressive symptoms. The strength of this association was exaggerated by neuroticism but attenuated by conscientiousness, suggesting that among neurotic individuals seasonal changes in depressive symptomatology are more dependent on seasonal shifts in morningness-eveningness but less dependent among conscientious ones. This result suggests that conscientiousness and emotional stability play a protective role against maladaptive consequences of eveningness.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronotype
• morningness-eveningness
• depressive symptoms
• personality
• Big Five
• conscientiousness
• neuroticism

Author contributions

JG: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing

MS: formal analysis, writing – review and editing, supervision

KSJ: formal analysis, writing – review and editing, supervision

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 Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education [project number: PSP 501-D125-20-000431].