[View Point] I’d Like to Hit the Snooze Just One. More. Time.

I’m not a morning person. I never have been, and it’s unlikely I ever will be. Ask my family or the people with whom I work. Especially ask the people at work. My manager, PCT Publisher Dan Moreland, used to have a personal policy of NOT talking to me before 10 a.m. Ouch.

Now that I’m older, and have kids in school, I am forced to be (somewhat) tolerable early in the day. I still don’t like mornings, but I’ve had to adjust. It’s one thing to be a grouch when it’s just you, but to wake up on the wrong side of the bed every day isn’t fair to those who live under the same roof as you.

It’s tough, though, since most people are hard wired to be morning people (or night owls). My son is just like me. It takes him forever to wake up and he’s not so happy when he does. My daughter, on the other hand, is cut from the same cloth as her dad. They both wake up at dawn. The sun rises, their eyes open and it’s go go go. Ugh.

That’s why I read with interest some research that came out of the Harvard Business Review titled “Morning People are Less Ethical at Night.” Initial research was published on HBR’s blog (http://bit.ly/1iuFSCT) and the full report will appear later this year in the journal Psychological Science.

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Sometimes good people do bad things.” This research confirms that.

HBR researchers say that behaving ethically takes energy. And if you’re running low on energy, you may make an unethical decision — even though a few hours earlier (or later) in the day you may have made another choice. “Resisting…temptations requires energy and effort. But the energy that is essential to exert self-control waxes and wanes,” the researchers wrote. “And when that energy is low, people are more likely to behave unethically. This opens up the possibility that even within the same day, a given person could be ethical at one point in time and unethical at another point in time.

“Over the past few years, management and psychology research has uncovered something interesting: both energy and ethics vary over time,” they continued. “In contrast to the assumption that good people typically do good things, and bad people do bad things, there is mounting evidence that good people can be unethical and bad people can be ethical, depending on the pressures of the moment. For example, people who didn’t sleep well the previous night can often act unethically, even if they aren’t unethical people.”

The researchers (Christopher M. Barnes, Brian Gunia and Sunita Sah) performed studies that gave participants (who reported themselves as larks [morning people] or night owls) an opportunity to perform a task. Unbeknownst to the subjects, the researchers knew whether or not they were lying. During the morning study sessions, the night owls were more likely to cheat than the larks. In a second (and similar) study, larks in the night session lied more than did larks in the morning session.

So what does this mean for pest management professionals? This month is PCT’s Annual Urban Wildlife Control Issue. And working to control wildlife in homes and commercial settings sometimes is done outside of a 9-to-5 schedule. These researchers say managers should be aware of how their lark, owl or in-between worker would handle an after-hours (or before-hours) job. Would a “lark” technician have a greater opportunity to make a poor decision while on the lookout for raccoons at 2 a.m.? Is a night owl technician more likely to err at a commercial account early in the morning before customers arrive?

“Managers should try to learn the chronotype (lark, owl or in between) of their subordinates and make sure to respect it when deciding how to structure their work,” the authors wrote. “Managers who ask a lark to make ethics-testing decisions at night, or an owl to make such decisions in the morning, run the risk of encouraging rather discouraging unethical behavior.”

This certainly provides pest control managers something to think about. And while you’re thinking about that, I’m going to go ahead and get that extra cup of coffee…

The author is editor of PCT magazine.