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Judges in the United States tend to give defendants longer sentences the day after switching to daylight saving time compared with other days of the year, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Previous research has shown that people tend to sacrifice, on average, about 40 minutes of sleep when they "spring forward" to daylight saving time, and even this small amount of lost sleep can have negative consequences, including an increase in workplace injuries, slacking off at work, and auto accidents. The results of this new research suggest that shortened sleep associated with the change to daylight saving time might also affect the severity of sentences doled out by judges.
"We find that the sentences given to those convicted of crimes may be partially polluted by the sleep of those giving the punishments," says researcher Kyoungmin Cho of the University of Washington, first author on the study. "Sleep is a factor that should not play a role in their sentences, but does."
Journal Reference:
Kyoungmin Cho, Christopher M. Barnes, Cristiano L. Guanara. Sleepy Punishers Are Harsh Punishers: Daylight Saving Time and Legal Sentences. Psychological Science, 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0956797616678437
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday January 02 2017, @04:07PM
Changing from Standard ("approximately correct") time to DST ("intentionally incorrect" time) is not far removed from a simple agreement to reschedule everything for one hour earlier for part of the year.
I wonder, if the clocks were left alone, whether such a scheduling change would result in statistically significant hysteria as does the switch to DST.
I'd love to test this hypothesis, with or without the scheduling change, on a national scale.
I do live in the USA, but having stayed in the middle east for the better part of a year once, in a country that doesn't DST, I enjoyed watching the usual "time change day" come and go while being able to leave my clocks alone--it was an unexpectedly satisfying feeling.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Monday January 02 2017, @04:44PM
I wonder, if the clocks were left alone, whether such a scheduling change would result in statistically significant hysteria as does the switch to DST.
If you expect everything to change schedule (i.e. all the transport timetables change, school start/finish times change, shop opening times change etc. - so many separate things to go wrong) then the result would likely be even greater chaos than the much simpler option of everybody just changing their clocks (something that is increasingly automatic).
More sensible would be to have a long, hard think about what activities actually needed to move to fit the daylight hours and make those flexible throughout the year... building, farming and other industries where you need to minimise the floodlighting bill. The fly in the ointment would be the huge state-funded childcare system that we ironically call "education" but mainly exists to look after the kids so that all of their wage-slave parents can go to work.
I do live in the USA, but having stayed in the middle east for the better part of a year once, in a country that doesn't DST, I enjoyed watching the usual "time change day" come and go while being able to leave my clocks alone--it was an unexpectedly satisfying feeling.
Of course, the utility of daylight savings time varies depending on your lattitude... Not sure why some US states bother, but here in the UK we probably need something (hibernating from November through March would be favourite), although if Scotland decide to become independent perhaps they can have their own time-zone and England can slip forward an hour so we can have a lie-in of a weekend without missing half the day...
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday January 02 2017, @05:29PM
Given that purpose of the public educational system(s), it's not unreasonable to think that its hours could shift with the prevailing cultural needs.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday January 02 2017, @04:58PM
I do live in the USA, but having stayed in the middle east for the better part of a year once, in a country that doesn't DST, I enjoyed watching the usual "time change day" come and go while being able to leave my clocks alone--it was an unexpectedly satisfying feeling.
A few years ago I suffered through spring forward in the US, then 2 weeks later I was in the UK and got hit again. Missed out on the "fall back" part that year as I was in Singapore.
For some reason I suffer far more with a 1 hour change to clocks due to daylight saving than I do from a 6 hour+ change from international travel.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday January 02 2017, @05:31PM
I suspect it has to do with being able to see obvious environmental and cultural cues that indicate that time *should* be different if traveling the world, vs. everything looking (and indeed being) exactly the same but the clock.