Do early birds share their worms? How prosocial behaviour and empathy vary across the day

Abstract

Social behaviours have been proposed to follow circadian patterns across the course of the day, but empirical support is mixed. As a within-subject test of circadian effects on everyday behaviour, we conduct an experience-sampling study with a near-representative population of 285 Americans (7405 observations). Prosocial behaviour and empathy were both somewhat more frequent in the morning (d = 0.08). However, these non-linear patterns only described morning-type participants; evening-types had consistent (and lower) rates of prosocial behaviour and empathy across time-of-day. These patterns were explained by morning-types reporting more social opportunities earlier in the day. These findings suggest that small, within-subject diurnal effects on social behaviour occur in daily life, and that some circadian effects may be driven by situation selection.