Late night coders rejoice: Science indicates it's smart to stay up late

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201005/why-night-owls-are-more-intelligent-morning-larks

by anthony_franco • 16 years ago

13 5 16 years ago

psychologytoday.com

gsivil• 16 years ago

I am much humbler than Science herself but I second that :)

itrytoohard• 16 years ago

A: it's smart to stay up late. B: smart people stay up late.

I think the article is saying B :)

rottencupcakes• 16 years ago

All of the graphs in this article were of 'childhood wakeup time.' The conclusion was that smarter children wake up later than dumber children.

One possible explanation of this: children in privileged families don't have to take the bus or walk to school. Therefore, they can afford to wake up 40 minutes later on weekdays! So they go to sleep later. They also live in safe neighborhoods where it's reasonable for teenagers to be out at one in the morning.

You can draw almost no conclusions from this article. It's embarrassing how many people want to spin this to "I'm smart cause I stay up late."

ewjordan• 16 years ago

All of the graphs in this article were of 'childhood wakeup time.'

AFAICT, it appears to be a graph of childhood IQ vs. adult wakeup time - unless, that is, the average child is going to bed around midnight, which seems wrong to me.

In any case, though, I don't think these graphs have much to say about any true night-owls - if you're anything like me, you're not going to bed a few minutes after midnight, it's more like 6 AM, which would probably remove us from this data set altogether as outliers...

atiw• 16 years ago

From the article

"For example, those with a childhood IQ of less than 75 ("very dull") go to bed around 23:41 on weeknights in early adulthood, whereas those with a childhood IQ of over 125 ("very bright") go to bed around 00:29." Wait, so 23:41 -> morning larks and 00:29 -> Night owls.....Are you kidding me? This just sounds ridiculuous....

Oh I love the fact that we (night owls - sleeping at worst at 1AM, and worst at 4-5 AM) are called "more intelligent". :)

Late night coders rejoice: Science indicates it's smart to stay up late

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