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Chronobiology International
The Journal of Biological and Medical Rhythm Research
Volume 36, 2019 - Issue 12
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Original Articles

Why do evening people consider themselves more intelligent than morning individuals? The role of big five, narcissism, and objective cognitive ability

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Pages 1741-1751 | Received 30 Jul 2019, Accepted 10 Oct 2019, Published online: 23 Oct 2019
 

ABSTRACT

Morningness-eveningness, or chronotype, reflects the timing of sleep-wake patterns across a 24-hour day. Extant research has revealed that chronotype correlates with numerous psychological constructs including cognitive ability. In the current research, we examined how people with different chronotypes perceive their intelligence. We expected eveningness to be positively associated with subjectively assessed intelligence (SAI) because evening chronotypes demonstrate slightly higher intelligence than morning individuals. Furthermore, we considered personality traits (Big Five and narcissism) and objective intelligence (measured with standardized tests of fluid and verbal IQ) as potential variables that could account for this relationship. Across two studies (N = 504 and 232), we found that eveningness was associated with higher SAI. This relationship remained significant even after controlling for objective intelligence. In Study 1, we also found that when conscientiousness and neuroticism were analyzed together with chronotype, the magnitude of positive association between eveningness and SAI increased. Furthermore, Study 2 revealed that evening individuals exhibited higher narcissism, which fully accounted for their intelligence self-views. In the discussion, we speculate that daily struggles of evening chronotypes to function in morning-oriented society give them a basis to think positively about their intelligence to the extent of positive bias.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego [IP2015026774]; Narodowe Centrum Nauki [2016/23/ B/HS6/00312].

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