Association Of Personality Traits And Chronotype On People

Prevalence of Bedtime Procrastination

Discuss about the Association of Personality Traits and Chronotype on Peoples Procrastination about Going to Bed.

The tendency to procrastinate is a problematic and prevalent occurrence among all individuals. Children procrastinate, youths do it and adults are not left behind also. Procrastination happens in a wide range of activities. Figures indicate that 46 % of students in colleges are reported to procrastinate on various academic responsibilities (Oginska and Oginska-Bruchal, 2014). About 10 % of the adults within the population are chronic procrastinators. The problem with procrastination, as studies indicate is that procrastinators perform poorly within work activities and even in academic achievements. Procrastination does not only revolve around workplaces, academic responsibilities or in the assigned tasks but also during the time one is required to go to bed. This is commonly referred to as ‘bedtime procrastination’. The definition of bedtime procrastination is the failure to go to bed within the time that is intended when there are no external circumstances preventing the individual from doing so.

People worldwide do not get adequate sleep as they are required. The current society is the kind which burns candles at both ends. Individuals are awake all night working, studying and having fun. According to Kroese, Evers, Adriaanse and de Ridder (2016), there are serious physical and mental health consequences for people with insufficient sleep. Research indicates that insufficient sleep plays part in memory and concentration problems of individuals, obesity and cardiovascular problems (Killgore, 2014). Due to these problems arising from bedtime procrastination, most research studies have concentrated on trying to understand factors that determine sleep behavior. Most studies have related bedtime procrastination to sleeping disorders, working nightshifts and other external factors. This leaves a gap as to whether chronotype and personality of persons influences bedtime procrastination. This study however tries to address this gap by other studies by determining whether going or not going to bed is associated with an individual’s personality traits or chronotype.

Studies have indicated that even though some people would like to go to be early so that they may have enough sleep, they usually go to bed late. Personality traits of these individuals may be the cause of their procrastination. Kroese et al. (2016) found out that lack of sufficient sleep and the actual amount of hours one sleeps is related to self-regulation and personality. Self-regulation is a human trait which enables individuals to override responses so that they may live up to social as well as other standards. The personality traits make individuals appear as ether evening owls or morning larks. Randler (2008) suggested that five personality traits determine an individual’s bedtime procrastination. The big five factor model identifies the xnxp personality traits as conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism and extraversion.

Negative Effects of Bedtime Procrastination

Despite the distribution of the big five inventory (BFI), very few studies have been carried out on the association between morningness- eveningness and bedtime procrastination. Randler’s study indicates that agreeableness correlates with morningness in a correlation of zero-order; and conscientiousness best predicts chronotype. Randler (2008) defines chronotype as the behavioral manifestation which underlies myriad physical processes’ circadian rhythms. People are known to have a chronotype, where an individual sleeps during a certain duration of the 24-hour period. Oginska and Oginska-Bruchal (2014) point out that higher conscientiousness are morning types. In contrast to extraversion, individuals with conscientiousness traits are also diurnal types. Since most research studies have focused on the determinants of insufficient sleep and its effects, this study aims to establish a clear association of chronotype, personality traits as well as bedtime procrastination.

Hypotheses

It was hypothesized that bedtime procrastination would be positively correlated with openness and neuroticism, and negatively correlated with morningness, Conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness.

Objective

This study purposes to determine the relationship between bedtime procrastination, personality traits and chronotype.

Research Question

How does chronotype and personality traits relate to bedtime procrastination?

Participants

Participants were recruited into the study using an online workplace website which can be used to conduct research. The workplace employees are highly diverse than samples within the internet and they yield data of high quality in psychological research. There were three hundred and thirty individuals who participated in the survey: 58 males; 270 females, 1 identified as other and 1 missing sex data. The participants were aged between 18 and 64 (M=27.67 years, SD=9.88; median age 23 years). During analysis, data from ten individuals were excluded from the analysis, that is, ten participants whose sex data was missing. 17.58 percent of the remaining participants were male with an age of between 18-64 years and 82.42 percent were female in the same age bracket. This represents a standard deviation of 9.88 and a median of 23 years.

Procedure

The survey was displayed within the website and availed to those individuals who participated to initial tasks that were involved to ensure that data collected was of high quality. ‘Task experimenter’ approved the completed tasks based on the reliability and accuracy judgement. Participants earned 70INR for completing a 20-min survey.

The demographics included marital status (separated, single, married, and widowed), age, sex, ethnicity, employment status and education. The participants had to also indicate the number of children they live with who were below the age of five years.

Factors That Determine Sleep Behavior

Bedtime procrastination was measured using and 9-item scale that was developed. Answers were provided on a five point scale that ranged from 1 (No) to 5 (daily).

Sleep outcomes were also assessed. To assess ‘hours of sleep’, participants were asked to indicate the average number of hours they sleep during weekdays. This was answered using a 7-point scale that ranged from “10 hours”. A single item (how many days are you tired every week?) was used to assess ‘daytime fatigue’. In order to assess ‘experienced sleep insufficiency’, one item was used (how many days a week do you sleep too little?). A five-point scale was used to measure the last two questions (0; 1-2; 3-4; 5-6; 7).

Five personality traits were assessed using the small version of big five inventory (BFI). Based on the Neo-FFI, the shortened Neo-FFI scale was a 10-item questionnaire with two items for each personality dimension (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism and conscientiousness).

In order to assess bedtime procrastination, a bedtime procrastination scale was used as described by Kroese et al. (2016).  Chronotype was assessed using the composite scale of morningness (Smith, Reilly & Midkiff, 1989).

Descriptive Statistics:

Table 1: Participants Scores

Bedtime Procrastination Scale had a total of 9 items. It was a Self-report measure that used 5-point Likert items where 1 = (almost) never and 5 = (almost) always. A mean score was derived from the 9 items where higher scores indicated higher levels of procrastination.

The Composite Scale of Morningness had a total of 13 items. The Self-report measure that begins with the instruction: “Please check the response for each item that best describes you.” Each item has a unique set of Likert-type response options. The score were obtained by summing the items and had a possible range from 13 (extreme eveningness) to 55 (extreme morningness).

The Neo-FFI used for personality traits had a total number of 60 items. There were 5 sub-scales with 12 items per trait scale. There was also a Self-report measure that used a 5-point Likert scale where 0 = strongly disagree, 1 =Disagree, 2 = Neutral, 3 = Agree, 4 = strongly agree. Scores for each of the 5 factors were obtained by summing participants’ responses on each of the 12 relevant items (some items are reverse coded). The possible range of scores for each factor is 0 to 48 where higher scores indicate higher levels of the named trait. Table 2 indicates result analysis.

Hypotheses

Table 2: Correlations of all Variables in the Study

According to table 3 below, about 30 percent of the reported samples slept six hours or less during weekday nights. 84 percent felt that they slept very little once every week. 40 percent reported that they slept very little 3-4 days or more every week. These data confirms that there was insufficient sleep in the general population. The participants also had moderate bedtime procrastination levels (M = 2.8, SD = 0.8) showing that a large part of the population commonly experience this.

Table 3: Correlation between Personality Traits

According to the table above, there was also a significant association between personality and how long an individual sleeps during the week as well as on weekends as well as between personality traits and weekend. Important correlations can be seen between both agreeableness conscientiousness and sleep length during the day making suggestions that longer sleep duration can be linked with higher conscientiousness and agreeableness. The length of sleep on the weekend correlates in a positive manner with neuroticism. Conscientiousness is associated with too much sleep so long as it is not on a weekday. Lack of sleep during the day correlates negatively with conscientiousness and agreeableness but positively with extraversion.

According to the results, age correlates negatively with morningness (r = _0.244, p < 0.001, N = 1231). The association between personality traits and morningness– eveningness was calculated first using the Pearson correlations of zero-order as well as second controlling for age through the partial correlations. In addition, men and women or rather adults were considered separately. There was positive relationship between morningness and conscientiousness, and morningness and agreeableness. The correlations remained important when age was controlled and when gender was examined separately. Openness and extraversion showed no association with diurnal preference. Eveningness was associated with neuroticism was related. When gender is considered separately, neuroticism is associated to eveningness in females. The correlation between agreeableness and chronotype remains only in younger participants but not in the older individuals, while the correlation with conscientiousness remains important in the whole sample. In addition, correlation between neuroticism and eveningness is confirmed in the young participants.

In conclusion, bedtime procrastination is positively correlated with openness and neuroticism, and negatively correlated with morningness (chronotype), Conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness. This basically indicates that personality traits and chronotype of an individual determines whether they have the tendency to procrastinate about going to bed. This implies that the worldwide problem of insufficient sleep that lead to severe repercussions for physical and mental health are as a result of factors that differ from person to person.

References

Killgore, W. (2014). Personality Traits Associated with Sleep Initiation Problems. J Sleep Disor: Treat Care, 03(01). https://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2325-9639.1000127

Kroese, F., Evers, C., Adriaanse, M., & de Ridder, D. (2016). Bedtime Procrastination: A self-Regulation Perspective on Sleep Insufficiency in the General Population. Journal of Health Psychology, 21(5), 853-862. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1359105314540014

Milfont, T. & Schwarzenthal, M. (2014). Explaining why larks are future-oriented and owls are present-oriented: Self-control mediates the chronotype–time perspective relationships. Chronobiology International, 31(4), 581-588. https://dx.doi.org/10.3109/07420528.2013.876428

Oginska, H. & Oginska-Bruchal, K. (2014). Chronotype and Personality Factors of Predisposition to Seasonal Sleep Procrastination. Chronobiology International, 31(4), 523-531. https://dx.doi.org/10.3109/07420528.2013.874355

Randler, C. (2008). Morningness–eveningness, sleep–wake variables and big five personality factors. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(2), 191-196. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.03.007

Smith, C., Reilly, C., & Midkiff, K. (1989). Evaluation of three circadian rhythm questionnaires with suggestions for an improved measure of morningness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(5), 728-738. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.74.5.728