Second Look: The Difference an Hour Can Make

Extraneous factors can really impact our decision-making.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

“Time is the ultimate status symbol.”

— Shane Parrish

Recently, my family and I spent a few days in the great state of Texas. To do so, we traveled back and forth between the Eastern Standard Time and Central Standard Time zones of the United States. That meant that our clocks fell back an hour and then forward an hour, respectively, traveling to Texas and then back home.

It’s just an hour, right? But it makes a difference. For those of us with sensitive body clocks, that slight change can alter sleep, wakefulness, drowsiness, eating, digestion — who knows what else? — in surprisingly impactful ways.

Then last weekend, here in the U.S., our collective time zone equilibrium was ritually shaken to its core. In keeping with our biannual tradition, we dutifully did our national dance between standard and daylight saving time. Effectively losing an hour as we pushed our clocks ahead, as they’ll stay for the next 6 months, I again felt the move and — like millions of Americans — was left pondering the oddity of this ritual.

I’ve written about this topic before and we revisit it here. Why? Because a mere hour time switch has been shown to affect people’s decision-making. And that’s directly relevant to understanding our jobs as negotiators.

Let’s take a second look at this curiously controversial topic and its negotiation implications.

Springing Forward, Dragging Behind

Last weekend, most of the United States shifted our clocks forward one hour, migrating from standard time (ST) to daylight saving time (DST). This annual ritual — “springing forward” — leaves us with longer evenings until mid-fall, as the sun rises and sets relatively later with the move to DST.

Hey, who doesn’t like brighter afternoons and more light towards the end of the day? Isn’t it great to take an evening walk or run with the sun still illuminating our paths? Ah, the simple joys of those extended spring and summer nights.

It’s quite a controversial topic these days, actually. Daylight savings has such ardent fans that last year the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would have made DST permanent beginning in 2023. This year, Congress will again consider the Sunshine Protection Act as another attempt to give us year-round clock stability.

Switching from ST to DST each spring, frankly, is tough. Losing an hour between Saturday and Sunday every year, people around the country spend much of the first DST week mildly disoriented, tired, and perhaps even a bit cranky. Not only do you lose an hour and suffer from an altered body clock, but the mornings seem really dark.  

Last year, I remember conducting a morning mediation on the post-switch Monday and, interestingly and separately, multiple participants commented on their challenges adjusting to DST. One attorney was having difficulties finding a file. “Must be this daylight saving thing,” she mused, half-jokingly. Another attorney confided that his client was being stubborn and unwilling to see the reasonable value of her case, as she was apparently “scrambling because of the time change.” Finally, one of the parties commented that he was so tired he “couldn’t even think straight.”

All of this got me wondering: Could something as seemingly benign as springing forward have an impact on whether parties are able to settle their disputes? Could advancing our clocks one hour seriously mean the difference between extended, costly, risky litigation and collaboration, compromise, and resolution?

Sleepwalking Through Decision-Making

Upon performing a quick bit of homework, I found something fascinating: Research from the Association for Psychological Science has shown that U.S. judges tend to give defendants longer sentences on “Sleepy Monday”— that is, the day following our yearly change to DST — compared to other days of the year. A study conducted by researchers from the University of Washington and University of Virginia suggests that Sleepy Monday judicial sentences were 5% longer than those given on: the previous and following Mondays; all other Mondays combined; and all other days of the year combined.

If you dig just a bit further, you’ll come across research “findings suggesting that judicial rulings can be swayed by extraneous variables that should have no bearing on legal decisions.” This study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzing parole board rulings made at different times in the day and relative to a series of meal breaks, found that the likelihood of a favorable ruling is higher at the beginning of the day or after a meal. The study also connects its findings to earlier research suggesting that making repeated decisions depletes executive function and mental resources that can influence subsequent decisions, too.

In other words, a little lost sleep tangibly impacts the harshness of judges’ sentences. And judicial rulings depend on what time of day the decision is made and when the judge had his or her last snack. You know — judges, whose specific role is to make honorable rulings that are thoughtful, fair, rational, and just?

I’ve seen enough judicial rulings and jury verdicts to know that, when it comes to controlling your destiny, you’re frequently better off negotiating a reasonable resolution than rolling the dice and going to trial. There are just too many unknowns to predict courtroom outcomes with a comfortable degree of certainty. If a judge or jury’s ruling could depend on the decision-makers’ wake-up time or breakfast menu, how well can you really predict the odds of your legal argument’s success?

So back to Sleepy Monday for a minute. Considering the effect that sleep deprivation and other extraneous factors can have on expert decision-makers, does it not also seem easy to intuit that people negotiating on Sleepy Monday might similarly be performing sub-optimally?

So What To Do?

A few thoughts and takeaways on this:

First, miscellaneous factors, including luck, can tremendously impact our decision-making. If judges’ sentencing can be hampered by a mere clock change or delayed tea-time, what other non-substantive elements could impact their decisions? If you happen to appear before a judge who’s sleepy, or distracted, or just in a bad mood, how might that affect your fate? Moreover, isn’t it unsettling to think that something as arbitrary as whether someone is having a good day could materially impact what should be an impartial, objective decision?

Likewise, if even judges’ reasoning can be altered by an advanced hour on the clock, how might the rest of us fare when “off our game” for some reason? Negotiation is certainly made up of a series of decisions, and we’re negotiating – and making these and other decisions – all day, every day.

Even though we can’t predict or control all of these types of variables, certain things we can dictate. For example, when I mediate cases with parties in person, we offer breakfast snacks, lunch, cookies, coffee, tea, and all sorts of other refreshments throughout the day. Why? We know that people’s physical comfort can affect their moods and decision-making. I generally like to start my morning mediations at 10 am. Unless the parties anticipate an all-day mediation, why not let people get a few extra minutes of sleep and avoid rush hour traffic? You probably have opportunities to control certain elements of your difficult conversations and negotiations, as well.

Furthermore, as this article points out, the findings of this particular DST study have implications that may extend beyond the legal system to any number of contexts in which people give or receive punishment.

In most negotiations, those involved will be required, at some point and in some way, to (1) make a series of decisions and (2) predict the future. As the Sleepy Monday and parole ruling studies illustrate, expert decision-makers are remarkably susceptible to non-substantive factors.

Now just imagine how error-prone we are when forced to make routine, daily decisions. Then imagine further how accurately we decide when assessing how we project others might make future decisions.

Go have a snack, take a nap, and think it over carefully.