Assessment of Prospective Memory, Risky Decision-Making, Collaborative Decision-Making among Individuals with Morning and Evening Circadian Typology

Biological aspects of personality have an influence on people psychological dimensions. The present study was aimed to compare prospective memory, risky decision-making, collaborative decision-making between individuals with morning and evening circadian typology.

For this purpose, a study with quantitative methodology approach and a descriptive design was conceived. The population included 70 male and female undergraduate or graduate students, 18 to 32 years old, were recruited using evening-morningness screening tests. The selected students included 38 morning and 32 evening types and were examined at two morning and afternoon sessions. Morningness  and eveningness questionnaire and computerized cognitive tasks including Time-Based Prospective Memory (TBPM), Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), collaborative decision making (prisoner's dilemma), were empoloyed for gathering data.

Statistical analysis using multivariate analysis of variance and showed that there are significant differences in prospective memory, risky decision-making between groups with morning and evening circadian type. Results showed that prospective memory performance in the evening type was better than the morning one. In addition, scores of risky decision-making in the evening group were higher than the morning one.

So the results of this study showed a significant difference between the two groups in cognitive functions on prospective memory, risky decision-making.