Are mornings for morality? Night owls might disagree

This looks like perfectly moral behavior.

Washington Fish and Wildlife

The question of why good people do bad things has fascinated psychologists for decades. Stanley Milgram famously identified deference to authority as a factor pushing people toward unethical behavior, but it seems that something even simpler could be in the mix: fatigue.

A recent study published in Psychological Science found that people are more inclined to cheat on a task at different times of the day, depending on their individual body clocks, or “chronotypes.” Chronotypes affect people’s natural peaks and troughs of physical and cognitive functions throughout the day, making “larks” more alert first thing in the morning and “owls” more wakeful late at night. The new evidence suggests that morning people are more likely to cheat at night, while evening people are more likely to cheat in the morning.

Morality in the morning

Building on research suggesting that people are more dishonest when they are tired, Brian Gunia, Christopher Barnes, and Sunita Sah assessed the chronotypes of participants, classifying them as either morning, intermediate, or evening people. Participants attended morning test sessions that required completing a puzzle task and were paid $0.50 for each puzzle they claimed to have solved correctly. If a participant failed to solve a puzzle but reported having done so, this was counted as a cheat.