Circadian Typology: A Comprehensive Review

2012/09/24 by Ana Adan, Ana Adán, Simon N. Archer +6 · 1,195 citations
Medicine · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Chronotype #Circadian rhythm #Circadian rhythm and melatonin #Clinical psychology #Cognition #Disease #Medicine #Neuroscience #Pathology #Personality #Psychiatry #Psychology #Sleep and Work-Related Fatigue #Sleep and related disorders #Social psychology #Typology

paper · open access · doi:10.3109/07420528.2012.719971

published in Chronobiology International 29(9), 1153-1175 (Informa UK Limited)

crossref issued 2012/09/24 · crossref published 2012/09/24 · crossref published-online 2012/09/24 · openalex publication_date 2012/09/24 · crossref created 2012/09/24 · crossref published-print 2012/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref deposited 2026/02/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04 · crossref indexed 2026/08/06

Abstract

The interest in the systematic study of the circadian typology (CT) is relatively recent and has developed rapidly in the two last decades. All the existing data suggest that this individual difference affects our biological and psychological functioning, not only in health, but also in disease. In the present study, we review the current literature concerning the psychometric properties and validity of CT measures as well as individual, environmental and genetic factors that influence the CT. We present a brief overview of the biological markers that are used to define differences between CT groups (sleep-wake cycle, body temperature, cortisol and melatonin), and we assess the implications for CT and adjustment to shiftwork and jet lag. We also review the differences between CT in terms of cognitive abilities, personality traits and the incidence of psychiatric disorders. When necessary, we have emphasized the methodological limitations that exist today and suggested some future avenues of work in order to overcome these. This is a new field of interest to professionals in many different areas (research, labor, academic and clinical), and this review provides a state of the art discussion to allow professionals to integrate chronobiological aspects of human behavior into their daily practice.

Citations

• Chronotype and diurnal patterns of positive affect and affective neural circuitry in primary insomnia
• Circadian preference, sleep and daytime behaviour in adolescence
• Morningness/eveningness and menstrual symptoms in adolescent females
• Regulation of dopaminergic transmission and cocaine reward by the Clock gene
• Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Circadian clock genes and sleep homeostasis
• Chronotherapeutics (light and wake therapy) in affective disorders
• Proactive People Are Morning People1
• Morningness/eveningness and the need for sleep
• The Mammalian Circadian Timing System: Organization and Coordination of Central and Peripheral Clocks
• Testing the Efficiency and Independence of Attentional Networks
• Morning people are stable people: Circadian rhythm and the higher-order factors of the Big Five

Cited by

• Causality and Scientific Inquiry: Lessons from Space Physics and Medical Sciences
• Disruption of adolescents’ circadian clock: The vicious circle of media use, exposure to light at night, sleep loss and risk behaviors
• The Contribution of Neanderthals to Phenotypic Variation in Modern Humans
• Chronotype and synchrony effects in human cognitive performance: A systematic review
• Shift work [wikipedia]

Related

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• Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Disruption: Causes, Metabolic Consequences, and Countermeasures
• Practice Parameters for the Clinical Evaluation and Treatment of Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorders
• Tracking behavioural differences across chronotypes: A case study in Finland using Oura rings
• A Non-negative Matrix Factorization Based Method for Quantifying Rhythms of Activity and Sleep and Chronotypes Using Mobile Phone Data