The Owls Are Not What They Seem: Health, Mood, and Sleep Problems Reported by Morning and Evening Types with Atypical Timing of Weekend Sleep

TL;DR

This study shows that weekend sleep timing can affect how morning or evening people are classified, influencing their health and mood outcomes.

Contribution

The study introduces a multidimensional chronotyping approach to better understand sleep patterns and their health impacts.

Findings

Conflicting assessments of morningness-eveningness were found in 141 students.

Evening types with early weekend sleep were more likely to be classified as lethargic or napping types.

Model simulations suggest bedtime procrastination disrupts biological clock signals.

Abstract

Morningness-eveningness is usually assessed as either a trait or a state using either a morning–evening preference scale or sleep timing reported for free days, respectively. These assessments were implemented in numerous studies exploring the associations between morningness-eveningness and health, mood, and sleep problems. Evening types almost always had more problems than morning types. We examined these associations in university students with conflicting results of trait and state assessments of morningness-eveningness and tried to confirm their chronotype using a multidimensional chronotyping approach that recognizes four types other than morning and evening (lethargic, vigilant, napping, and afternoon). The conflicting trait and state assessments of morningness-eveningness were found in 141 of 1582 students. Multidimensional chronotyping supported morningness of morning types with late weekend sleep timing, and the associations with health, mood, and sleep problems resembled the associations of other morning types (i.e., these associations persisted despite late sleep timing). In contrast, evening types with early weekend sleep timing were more likely classified as lethargic or napping types rather than evening types. They did not resemble evening types in their associations with health, mood, and sleep problems (i.e., early sleep timing did not change these associations). Model-based simulations of the sleep–wake cycles of students with conflicting trait and state assessments suggested that their bedtimes cannot be solely determined by their biological clocks. On weekdays or weekends, mind-bedtime procrastination can lead to missing the bedtime signal from their biological clocks (i.e., self-deprivation of sleep or, in other words, voluntary prolongation of the wake phase of the sleep–wake cycle).

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