Whether you're a morning or evening person may influence your sex life, a study has found.

Axar.az reports citing Daily Mail Online.

Night owls, who naturally prefer to wake up later and stay up longer, tend to have more relaxed attitudes towards casual encounters.

Larks, meanwhile, who are early to rise and early to bed, are likely to be more conservative, according to the research by Pennsylvania State University.

A person's inclination to engage in uncommitted sex is known as their sociosexuality, explained study author Dr Robert Matchock.

He said that an 'unrestricted sociosexuality' in night owls may be a consequence of other characteristics that previous studies have found to be associated with evening people.

He said: 'Eveningness for both men and women is associated with a more unrestricted sociosexuality, which may stem from a broader suite of personality traits such as impulsivity or openness to experience.

'Increases in sociosexuality may be subsumed into these traits as a lower level trait or a consequence of these behavioural traits.'

For the study, 554 young adults – who did not know the purpose of the study – answered a series of questions covering three elements of sociosexuality.

Firstly, they were asked about their actual behaviour in the past, such as how many times they'd had a one-night stand.

Next, they were asked about their attitude towards casual encounters, such as what they thought about sex without love.

Then they were asked about their interest in engaging in, or their tendency to fantasise about, uncommitted sex. Questions for this area included 'in everyday life, how often do you have spontaneous fantasies about having sex with someone you have just met?'

They then answered a detailed questionnaire which uncovered their tendency towards morningness or eveningness.

Dr Matchock found that in men and women, evening types were more likely to be open towards casual sex, compared to morning types, and more likely to fantasise about strangers.

However, when it came to their actual behaviour, only the female nightowls actually had more one-night stands (than female larks); male nightowls did not.

'It is plausible that (the owl) men in the current sample, although having higher sociosexual desire…were not able to transfer that desire into actual copulations,' said Dr Matchock.

He stressed that the study's findings do not imply that every evening person will be high in sociosexuality.

'These were group average differences between morning and evening people,' he said.

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.