Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren boglebam here. Do you make better decisions in the morning or in the evening? That might depend on whether you want a quick decision or an accurate one. A few years back, researchers looked at the decision making behavior of a dred and eighty four users of the Free Internet Chess Server to discover at what time of day
players made the best decisions. Chess players, who in this case made around forty move decisions in games lasting from three to fifteen minutes, are often used in experiments that analyze complex human thinking. The Free Internet Chess Server Chess Game Database presented itself as an optimal study tool with its treasure trove of time stamped right and wrong decisions, and allowed researchers to study not just the length of time, but also the quality of real world decision making behavior
at various times of day. Study published in the journal Cognition showed that, whether you're morning person or not, the most accurate decision making happens on the early side of the day, between eight am and one pm. However, even though morning decisions were the most accurate, those also took the longest to make, and that's a liability in time limited activities like a chess game. As the day wore on,
the chess player's decision making sped up, but accuracy slumped. Ultimately, the time of day had no effect on the player's scores, as decisions, speed and accuracy canceled each other out. We spoke with the studies lead author, Maria Juliana Leone, who is herself a chess champion and a postdoctoral fellow at the Integrated Neuroscience Lab at the Universidada in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She said, in some way these two variables are compensating
to maintain the performance throughout the day. Leon suspected it was more than growing tiredness as a day waned that affected player's speed of decision making. Groups of players were observed playing more games at certain times than others. She thought the gamers chronotypes might be playing a role. Your chronotype is a classification based on which of a day's
twenty four hours you choose for sleep. Subjects were asked to complete a morning this evening miss questionnaire to determine whether they tended to be larks who preferred to rise early or owls who like to sleep late. Leon's research showed that both larks and owls played the most chess games at about the same hours since awakening. Even though owls would get started later than larks, the number of games would end up being about the same. Surprisingly, the
decision making pattern was the same for both groups. It got slower as the day progressed. However, the larks slowed down the most. So how can we put the findings of the study to concrete use, Leon said, If we know that during the morning we are slower, but our decisions are more accurate, and during the afternoon we know that our decisions will be faster but less accurate, we can decide when to make some important decisions according to
what's important for that decision. In particular, maybe we need to prior has the time or the quality. If we need to make a decision faster, maybe it's better to make that decision in the afternoon. Leon took the chronotype questionnaire and found she was halfway between the morning larks and the night owls. She therefore tries to schedule intense work tasks closer to the middle of the day, but
with all the daily demands of the work. She hasn't yet managed to divide and schedule her decision making for optimal results. She said, it's not easy for me either. Today's episode was written by Michelle Edelman and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, for my heart Radio is the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where ever you listen to your favorite shows.