Morningness/Eveningness and evolutionary psychology: a research proposal

Abstract

The present research proposal addresses morningness and eveningness—being an “early bird” or “night owl”—from an evolutionary psychological perspective. Specifically, the proposal uses the lens to enrich our understanding of how various theories in psychology conceptualize and measure morningness and eveningness. Because of the evolutionary framework, my proposal asks an essential question: how was being an early bird or night owl adaptive in our ancestral environments? What is adaptive often comes down to what can increase a person’s ability to survive and/or reproduce. A raft of evolutionary psychological literature led me to believe that morning-types are more survival oriented, and evening-types are more reproduction oriented. I suggest that these orientations manifest in morning-types and evening-types levels of disgust sensitivity. Accordingly, the preliminary hypotheses regard disgust sensitivity—a person’s proclivity to feel the emotion of disgust—in two specific domains: pathogen disgust sensitivity and sexual disgust sensitivity. I predict (a) that morningness will be positively related to pathogen disgust sensitivity and (b) that eveningness will be related to sexual disgust sensitivity. I use the Morningness Eveningness Questionnaire, the Three-Domain Disgust Sensitivity Scale, and other instruments—including the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen, the Light Triad Scale—to create secondary hypotheses that apply the lens of evolutionary psychology to past research on morningness and eveningness. I also use the Geher and Kaufman’s (2016) Mating Intelligence Scale to fill a gap in intelligence research as it relates to morningness and eveningness. The study will use a correlational design; we plan to use Analysis of Variance to explore the relationships between our main predictor variable morningness/eveningness and our several outcome variables, including disgust sensitivity and mating intelligence. Keywords: Psychology, Morningness, Eveningness, Disgust Sensitivity, Multiple Intelligences, Personality, Personality Disorders, Dark Triad, Light Triad, Evolutionary Psychology