title: Time to decide: Diurnal variations on the speed and quality of human decisions.
abstract: Human behavior and physiology exhibit diurnal fluctuations. These rhythms are entrained by light and social cues, with vast individual differences in the phase of entrainment - referred as an individual's chronotype - ranging in a continuum between early larks and late owls. Understanding whether decision-making in real-life situations depends on the relation between time of the day and an individual's diurnal preferences has both practical and theoretical implications. However, answering this question has remained elusive because of the difficulty of measuring precisely the quality of a decision in real-life scenarios. Here we investigate diurnal variations in decision-making as a function of an individual's chronotype capitalizing on a vast repository of human decisions: online chess servers. In a chess game, every player has to make around 40 decisions using a finite time budget and both the time and quality of each decision can be accurately determined. We found reliable diurnal rhythms in activity and decision-making policy. During the morning, players adopt a prevention focus policy (slower and more accurate decisions) which is later modified to a promotion focus (faster but less accurate decisions), without daily changes in performance.
authors: Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, CONICET, Laboratorio de Neurociencia, C1428BIJ Buenos Aires, Argentina; Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, CONICET, Laboratorio de Cronobiología, Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología, B1876BXD Bernal, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors: María Juliana
authors: MJ
authors: Leone
authors: Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET, Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, C1428EGA Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors: Diego
authors: D
authors: Fernandez Slezak
authors: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, CONICET, Laboratorio de Cronobiología, Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología, B1876BXD Bernal, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Electronic address: dgolombek@unq.edu.ar.
authors: Diego
authors: D
authors: Golombek
authors: Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, CONICET, Laboratorio de Neurociencia, C1428BIJ Buenos Aires, Argentina. Electronic address: msigman@utdt.edu.
authors: Mariano
authors: M
authors: Sigman
mesh_terms: D002940:Circadian Rhythm; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Chess; Circadian rhythms; Decision-making; Human chronobiology