Here’s where it’s worth being honest that the research doesn’t hand out one universal answer. Chronotype — where your body naturally sits on the morning-to-evening spectrum — has a real, measurable effect on how well you tolerate night work, but the exact shape of that effect isn’t as simple as “night owls do fine, morning people don’t.”

A large genetic study using UK Biobank data found that a predisposition toward eveningness is protective for people who work permanent night shifts, associated with better sleep duration and lower rates of the health problems typically linked to night work — meaning if you’ve always been a natural night owl, your body may genuinely be built for this more than a lifelong early riser’s is.

But a separate cohort study of more than 37,000 nurses found something that complicates a simple “owls win” narrative: intermediate chronotypes — people who aren’t strongly morning or evening types — actually reported the fewest sleep problems overall, doing better than both definite morning and definite evening types. And a more recent study following newly hired nurses found that nurses with an evening chronotype actually experienced more pronounced declines in resilience and worse sleep and mental health outcomes within their first year of shift work, even though the broader long-term literature tends to favor evening types for tolerance.

Put together, the honest read isn’t “figure out if you’re an owl and you’ll know your answer.” It’s that your own body’s track record on nights so far is more useful information than any general chronotype label — if you’ve been adapting reasonably well, that’s real signal, and if the first year has been rough regardless of chronotype, that’s consistent with what the research on new night workers actually shows, not evidence you’re doing something wrong.