Time-of-day effects in implicit associations are probably selection effects, not circadian rhythms
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Anatomy and Physiology, Psychiatry and Psychology, Statistics
- Keywords
- internet research, implicit attitudes, circadian rhythms, methods, cosinor regression, selection effects, IAT
- Copyright
- © 2015 Schofield
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Time-of-day effects in implicit associations are probably selection effects, not circadian rhythms. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1475v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1475v2
Abstract
Time-of-day effects in human psychological functioning have been known of since the 1800s. However, outside of those specifically focused on the quantification of circadian rhythms, they have largely been neglected. Moves toward online data collection now mean that psychological investigations take place around the clock, which affords researchers the ability to easily study time-of-day effects. Recent analyses have shown, for instance, that implicit attitudes have time-of-day effects. The plausibility that these effects indicate circadian rhythms rather than selection effects is considered in the current study. There was little evidence that the time-of-day effects in implicit attitudes shifted appropriately with factors known to influence circadian rhythms, and even variables that cannot logically show circadian rhythms demonstrated stronger time-of-day effects than did implicit attitudes. Taken together, these results suggest that time-of-day effects in implicit attitudes are more likely to represent selection effects rather than circadian rhythms, but do not rule out the latter possibility.
Author Comment
The manuscript has been extensively rewritten as a highly relevant paper (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110149) was missed in the initial literature review. The analyses in version 1 of the pre-print are presented as Part 1, two new sets of analyses (Parts 2 & 3) have been added. These new analyses were added in response to feedback that selection effects needed to be ruled out.