People who hit the snooze button are more intelligent

If you go to bed late and wake up late, don’t worry about feeling bad. It turns out you actually might be more intelligent, according to research.

Researchers found that snoozing later in the morning is linked to creativity and intelligence.

The study, Why night owls are more intelligent, explains that intelligent people are better able to deal with the snooze button because it’s a new invention that our ancestors didn’t have. In other words, they’re more able to adapt to modern life.

The study states:

While there are some individual differences in the circadian rhythm, where some individuals are more nocturnal than others, humans are basically a diurnal (as opposed to nocturnal) species. Humans rely very heavily on vision for navigation but, unlike genuinely nocturnal species, cannot see in the dark or under little lighting, and our ancestors did not have artificial lighting during the night until the domestication of fire. Any human in the ancestral environment up and about during the night would have been at risk of predation by nocturnal predators. It is therefore safe to assume that our ancestors rose at around dawn and went to sleep at around dusk, to take full advantage of the natural light provided by the sun, and the ‘‘night life” (sustained and organized activities at night after dusk) is probably evolutionarily novel.

And being able to listen to our body and its need, rather than the hard and fast rules of clocks, we’re more likely to be independent thinkers.

To find this out, the researchers asked 130 students about their sleeping habits and measured their IQs.

The study concludes: "More intelligent individuals are more likely to be night owls".

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