Linking sleep, political ideology, and religious observance: a multi-national comparison

Abstract

Abstract Sleep is fundamental to life and essential to one’s health behavior, scholastic achievement, and work performance. Recent years have seen an increase in empirical investigations incorporating sleep research into political science. This study complements existing sleep-politics studies by examining the associations between chronotype (a person’s preferred time to sleep and wake up) and attitudinal and behavioral political outcomes (left–right ideology and social conservatism proxied by religious service attendance). We analyze representative samples from 10 national contexts (Finland, Greece, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, and Switzerland) to test our hypotheses. The results demonstrate that morning chronotype has significant links with political conservatism in six national contexts depending on model specification (most robustly in Switzerland). Unexpectedly, the morning chronotype may have links to liberalism in three other countries depending on model specification (most robustly in Russia). The results for religious observance are more uniform, indicating a link between morningness and greater religious observance across all cases in many specifications (excepting a reversed relationship in New Zealand in some models). Urbanization, seasonal effects, geographical characteristics, and religious denominations are explored as potential confounders.