The snooze button is a cruel mistress. Yes, you get nine minutes more sleep, but that’s nine minutes less time to get ready for work.
People who hit the snooze button are often written off as being lazy and unmotivated, but a 2009 study suggests that there may be more to the snooze crew than meets the eye.
“Why night owls are more intelligent”, by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa and editor of Psychology Today Kaja Perina, draws links between sleeping in and intelligence, as well as creativity and an independent spirit.
“Just five more minutes” x 8. Photo: Pixabay
The research looked at the sleeping habits of 1229 men and women, and found that those who go to bed after 11 pm and get up after 8 am tended to have more money and live a more comfortable lifestyle.
Not to diss science or anything, but if you’re spending more time in bed, isn’t your life more comfortable by default? Unless your bed is full of toast crumbs, that shit is unbearable.
Kanazawa and Perina think that humans are better suited to sleeping and waking like our ancestors – early to bed, early to rise. But with our evolved society, getting to bed early is more difficult, so being able to adapt to modern rhythms – going to bed late, and hitting the snooze button – apparently makes us more intelligent.
…yeah, it’s not really that clear, is it?
Van Gogh probably snoozed all the time, the git.
The Independent had this to say on the matter:
“This second correlation might be a bit more intuitive: If we learn to listen to our own body’s needs and not to the hard and fast rules of our clocks, we are more likely to pursue our own passions and find our own solutions to problems. This makes us more creative and independent.”
So basically, if you snooze, your body has learned to adapt to the modern world and work against your evolutionary preferences, whilst also demonstrating that you put your body’s needs first, rather than committing to the structure of society.
Well, aren’t you clever?
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