Morning People Feel Happier than Night Owls Kate

“晚上不想睡，早上不想起。”很多人用这句话形容自己的状态。近日，多伦多大学的研究人员发现，和夜猫子相比，早起的人们更快乐，对整体生活的满意度更高。

People who get up early feel happier and more satisfied with life overall, compared to night owls.

But the good news for teenagers is that most people become earlier risers as they grow up and this change is also associated with greater feelings of happiness.

Researchers at the University of Toronto asked more than 700 people about their preferred time of day and how healthy and happy they generally feel.

They then compared the responses of the group of younger adults aged 17 to 38 with older people ages 59 to 79.

Only about seven percent of young adults get up early in the morning, while by age 60 most people preferred to be up with the dawn. Just seven percent of the older people in the study described themselves as night owls.

“We found that older adults reported greater positive emotion than younger adults, and older adults were more likely to get up in the morning than younger adults,” study researcher Renee Biss from the University of Toronto reportedly told LiveScience. Those who got up early were associated with greater happiness emotions in both age groups.

Morning types also tended to report that they felt healthier than the late risers, according to the study that published in the journal Emotion. The researchers said that this apparent health benefit could come from the extra sleep they would enjoy, as their sleeping schedule would fit with societys expectations of rising early for work.

This extra sleep could not only make them feel more active, but may also improve their immune system.

“Evening people may be more likely to social jetlag; this means that their biological clock is out of sync with the social clock,” Ms Biss said. “Societys expectations are far more organized around a morning?type persons schedule.”

“An evening person may go through their week feeling unhappy because they have to get up earlier than they would like to.” But Ms Biss said there was hope for night owls as it was possible for them to turn themselves into morning people.

“One way to do it is to increase your natural light exposure early in the morning, and to wake up earlier and go to bed earlier,” she said. “Its easiest if you have a consistent schedule, to make sure you are waking up at the same time every day.”