If you struggled to drag yourself out of bed this morning, chances are, you weren’t sharing it with anyone. New research has discovered that women who are night owls are more likely to be single than women who are natural early risers. (You know, those smug bastards to skip into work an hour early, ‘because I just wake up naturally at that time.’ Presumably, they’re also the same people who remember to iron their pillow cases and know how those oven cleaner bag things work).
‘Night owls, both males and females, are more likely to be single or in short-term romantic relationships versus long-term relationships, when compared to early birds,’ explained study author Dario Maestripieri, professor in Comparative Human Development at University of California. ‘In addition, male night owls reported twice as many sexual partners than male early birds.’
Maestripieri’s team have discovered that our sleep patterns are linked to important character traits and behaviour - not least how risk averse we are. Men tend to take more risks than women, due to higher levels of cortisol in their body. However, the study revealed that women who were night owls, tended to have comparable levels of cortisol to men.
Cortisol (which is naturally a stress hormone) is associated with high metabolism, high energy and arousability. Incidentally, high cortisol levels have also been associated with higher cognitive function. Similarly some studies have shown that high-achieving, successful people have higher cortisol levels (which is an excellent fact to fling into the face of those smug early risers next time to stagger into work 15 minutes late with coffee down your top).
Maestripieri reckons there’s a evolutionary reason behind this. ‘From an evolutionary perspective, it has been suggested that the night-owl trait may have evolved to facilitate short-term mating, that is, sexual interactions that occur outside of committed, monogamous relationship. It is possible that, earlier in our evolutionary history, being active in the evening hours increased the opportunities to engage in social and mating activities, when adults were less burdened by work or child-rearing.'
Earlier in our evolutionary history? What about now? When’s the last time you successfully pulled on the bus on the way to work? Or at any time before eight PM? Talk about cause and effect - if you’re a night owl, you’ll presumably spending your evenings in bars and clubs - natural breeding grounds for one-night stands and meaningless flings. Whereas going to bed at 10pm sharp every night would be no fun at all if you didn’t have a reliable long-term partner to a) watch a boxset with and b) shag afterwards.
Also, the subjects of this study were 500 graduate students, which surely must skew the results. Night owls having one-night stands, or students having a very standard week? Hmmm…
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Picture: Rory DCS
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.