It’s owl time!: the relationship between chronotype and resolution of temporal ambiguity

ABSTRACT

When adducing temporal relationship, we can either adopt the perspective of conceiving ourselves as moving toward the future (called Moving Ego perspective), or we can adopt the perspective of the future time coming toward us (called Moving Time perspective). Previous research has shown that the adoption of these two types of temporal perspectives is highly flexible, influenced by a complex of factors. However, it remains largely unknown whether chronotype, characterized by one’s tendency to conduct activities and sleep at a particular time during the day-night cycle, is correlated to metaphorical perspectives of time. Some evidence suggests a possible link between procrastination and the Moving Ego perspective. An additional line of research has shown that the evening chronotype is significantly associated with procrastination. Integrating these various lines of research led us to hypothesize that having a preference for eveningness may predispose a person toward adopting the ego-moving perspective. We tested this hypothesis and found robust support for this association in an online sample of Chinese speakers (N = 284). We found that participants who favor the ego-moving representation exhibited a high level of eveningness. This work suggests that individual differences in circadian preference play a unique role in the resolution of temporal ambiguity.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronotype
• morningness
• eveningness
• temporal reasoning
• time metaphor
• procrastination
• perspective of time

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Southwest University [SWU1909753]; Social Science Foundation of Chongqing Municipality of China [2019BS020].