Godless owls, devout larks: Religiosity and conscientiousness are associated with morning preference and (partly) explain its effects on life satisfaction

The associations between morningness-eveningness, conscientiousness, and religiosity have not been investigated to date. The aim of the present research was to provide evidence for the relationships between these dimensions. Moreover, we tested whether the well-established link between morningness and life satisfaction could be explained by elevated religiosity of morning-oriented individuals and whether this relationship may be mediated by conscientiousness. The investigation was conducted on two independent samples of Polish adults (N = 500 and N = 728). Our results corroborated earlier findings that morningness was positively associated with both conscientiousness and satisfaction with life. We also found evidence for a significant positive association between morningness and religiosity. Moreover, controlling for age and gender, we obtained significant mediation effects showing that the association between morningness-eveningness and satisfaction with life might stem, at least in part, from the higher religiosity among morning-oriented individuals, also when conscientiousness was included in the model. It means that more morning-oriented individuals may benefit from higher psychological well-being thanks to both personality characteristics and attitudes towards religion.