Abstract
Circadian typology has been related to several mental health aspects such as resilience, perceived well-being, emotional intelligence and psychological symptoms and disorders. However, the relationship between circadian typology and emotion regulation, metacognitions and assertiveness, which constitute core constructs related to psychological well-being and psychopathology, remain unexplored. This study aims to analyze whether circadian typology is related with those three constructs, considering the possible influence of sex. 2283 participants (833 women), aged 18-60 years (30.37 ± 9.26 years), completed the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire 30, and the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule. Main effects were observed between circadian typology and cognitive reappraisal, metacognitions, negative beliefs of uncontrollability and danger, cognitive confidence, cognitive self-consciousness, and assertiveness (F(2,2276) > 4.80, p < 0.009, ηp2 > 0.004, in all cases). Morning-type participants scored lower than evening-type in general metacognitive beliefs, negative beliefs of uncontrollability and danger, cognitive confidence, and cognitive self-consciousness, and higher than evening-type in cognitive reappraisal and assertiveness, while neither-type exhibited intermediate scores (p < 0.033 in all cases). According to the results, evening-type individuals might display a higher tendency to support maladaptive beliefs about thinking itself as well as a lesser tendency to reappraise a potentially emotion eliciting situations in order to modify its meaning and its emotional impact and to exert their rights respectfully. This new evidence improves the understanding of the relationships between circadian typology and psychological factors related to psychological well-being and psychopathology. Results implications for the onset and maintenance of psychological problems are discussed. Although future longitudinal studies are needed, results emphasize evening-type as a risk factor for the development of psychological disturbances and morning-type as a protective factor against those.
Highlights
During the last decades there has been an increase in the interest in studying the associations between morningness-eveningness and the so-called circadian typologies and mental health related-factors such as satisfaction with life and well-being [1,2], resilience and optimism [3], emotional intelligence [4], maladaptive coping strategies [5], personality traits related to risk behaviors [6], psychological symptoms [7,8] and psychopathology [9]
For the first time, the relationships among circadian typology, emotion regulation strategies, metacognitions and assertiveness were examined in a wide sample of healthy subjects
Obtained results supported the hypothesis that morning-type participants showed the highest cognitive reappraisal, meaning a higher tendency to use this kind of antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategy, which implies the reappraise of a potentially emotion-eliciting situation in order to modify its meaning and its emotional impact
Summary
During the last decades there has been an increase in the interest in studying the associations between morningness-eveningness and the so-called circadian typologies and mental health related-factors such as satisfaction with life and well-being [1,2], resilience and optimism [3], emotional intelligence [4], maladaptive coping strategies [5], personality traits related to risk behaviors [6], psychological symptoms [7,8] and psychopathology [9].Morningness-eveningness is a dimension that tends to follow a normal distribution and allows for classifying the population in one-of-three circadian typologies or chronotypes: morning-, neither-, and evening-type [10]. The higher synchronization with the light-dark cycle in the morning-type may be the cause of the tendency to suggest this chronotype as a protective factor for the incidence of psychopathology [12], even suicidality [13], while evening-type has been suggested as a risk factor for the development of mental disturbances and psychological symptoms [9,11,14,15] Those differences might be explained by the social jet-lag [16], which occurs when the social and the biological clocks are out of sync with each other
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