[ExI] Armchair Evolutionary Psychology: Larks vs Night Owls

[Emlyn]

On 15/03/2008, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/03/2008, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I tried to think of a good individual selection oriented explanation,
> > > came up blank. If you have an imbalance between early people and late
> > > people in a group, what is the individual selection pressure that
> > > rectifies this, making it an ESS? Anyone got any ideas on this?
> > >
> > > [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2996364.stm
> > > [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12841365
> > > [3]
> > >
> > http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/primarysources?wtID=33.3czt.11.3lcx
> > > (scroll down for "How you sleep is who you are")
> >
> > Well according to the article linked to in The Atlantic:
> > ------------
> > "Social behavior diverges as well: Morning people are more likely to be
> > self-controlled and exhibit "upstanding" conduct; they respect
> > authority, are more formal, and take greater pains to make a good
> > impression. (Earlier research also suggests that they are less likely
> > to hold radical political opinions.) Evening people, by contrast, are
> > "independent" and "nonconforming," and more reluctant to listen to
> > authority—which suggests that teachers may have several reasons to
> > prefer those students who wake up in time for class."
> > ----------
> > Based on this, I would half-jokingly suggest that night owls who were
> > up after the alpha male had gone to sleep could have sex without
> > getting beaten up for it. And the evolutionary advantage of that is
> > self-evident.
>
> Now, there's a start! If we posit the early rising group as the
> defacto situation (I'll address that below), we could say that late
> risers do this to be slightly out of sync with the early group, avoid
> the power structure of the group, and thus, yes, get more (as Brian
> said, lmao). That kind of slight tendency in some genes could be self
> supporting, and tend toward creating a sub group, the genes from late
> group not mixing so much with the early group.
>
> This then begs the question, why is the early group the default? It
> seems to me that the early rising times better match the daylight
> hours. So straight thinking, logical types would find that the most
> useful time to be awake, I guess.
>
> The early risers are the people that attend to the day to day business
> of life, absolutely necessary, but hard to think deeply around because
> deep thinking looks like idleness. So, the late group attracts the
> deep and weird thinkers, who need mental time away from the early
> group. It looks like that's where you start to get a weak separation
> of genes into Early Riser+Straight Thinker vs Late Riser+Bendy
> Thinker.
>
> Not fully coherent, but that's shaping up as something. Anyone got
> something more / different?

Oh, a possible competing explanation? The differences come from some
far historical racial mixing, of two separate groups who already had
these seperate tendencies.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com