Procrastination is an avoidance coping behavior that involves unnecessarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there could be negative consequences for doing so. It is a human experience resulting from internal stress that leads to delaying everyday chores or even putting off tasks such as attending an appointment, submitting a job report or academic assignment, or broaching a stressful issue with a partner. It is often perceived as a negative trait due to its hindering effect on one's productivity, and is associated with depression, low self-esteem, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy; however, it can also be considered part of maladaptive perfectionism or a wider stance for dealing with certain demands that could present risky or negative outcomes or require waiting for new information to arrive. For instance, procrastinating can prevent a person from acting on suicidal intent.
Etymology The word 'procrastination' originates from the Latin word , which is composed of the prefix , and , from .
Perspectives From a cultural and social perspective, students from both Western and non-Western cultures are found to exhibit academic procrastination, but for different reasons. Students from Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid doing worse than they have done before or failing to learn as much as they should have, whereas students from non-Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid looking incompetent or demonstrating a lack of ability in front of their peers. Different cultural perspectives of time management can impact procrastination. For example, in cultures that have a multi-active view of time, people tend to place a higher value on making sure a job is done accurately before finishing. In cultures with a linear view of time, people tend to designate a certain amount of time on a task and stop once the allotted time has expired.
A study of the behavioral patterns of pigeons through delayed gratification suggests that procrastination is not unique to humans but can also be observed in some other animals. There are experiments finding clear evidence for "procrastination" among pigeons, which show that pigeons tend to choose a complex but delayed task rather than an easy but hurry-up one. Procrastination has been studied by philosophers and psychologists, and into the 21st century also by behavioral economists.
Prevalence In a study of academic procrastination from the University of Vermont, published in 1984, 46% of the subjects reported that they "always" or "nearly always" procrastinated writing papers, while approximately 30% reported procrastinating studying for exams and reading weekly assignments (by 28% and 30% respectively). Nearly a quarter of the subjects reported that procrastination was a problem for them regarding the same tasks; however, as many as 65% indicated that they would like to reduce their procrastination when writing papers, and approximately 62% indicated the same for studying for exams and 55% for reading weekly assignments.
A 1992 study showed that "52% of surveyed students indicated having a moderate to high need for help concerning procrastination." A study done in 2004 showed that 70% of university students categorized themselves as procrastinators while a 1984 study showed that 50% of the students would procrastinate consistently and considered it a major problem in their lives. In a study performed on university students, procrastination was shown to be greater with tasks that were perceived as unpleasant or as impositions than with tasks for which the student believed they lacked the required skills for accomplishing the task.
Another point of relevance is that of procrastination in industry. A study from the Psychology in Russia: State of the Art journal "The Impact of Organizational and Personal Factors on Procrastination in Employees of a Modern Russian Industrial Enterprise", helped to identify the many factors that affected employees' procrastination habits. Some of which include intensity of performance evaluations, importance of their duty within a company, and their perception and opinions on management and/or upper level decisions.
Behavioral criteria of academic procrastination Gregory Schraw, Theresa Wadkins, and Lori Olafson in 2007 proposed three criteria for a behavior to be classified as academic procrastination: it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying. Steel reviewed all previous attempts to define procrastination, and concluded in a 2007 study that procrastination is "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay." Sabini and Silver argued that postponement and irrationality are the two key features of procrastination. Delaying a task is not deemed as procrastination, they argue, if there are rational reasons behind the delay. Moreover, in a study conducted by Pogorskiy and Beckmann, learners' procrastination is characterised by stable sequential patterns in learners' web navigation behaviour. An approach that integrates several core theories of motivation as well as meta-analytic research on procrastination is the temporal motivation theory. It summarizes key predictors of procrastination (expectancy, value, and impulsiveness) into a mathematical equation.
Psychological perspective The pleasure principle may be responsible for procrastination; one may prefer to avoid negative emotions by delaying stressful tasks. In 2019, a research conducted by Rinaldi et al. indicated that measurable cognitive impairments may play a role in procrastination. As the deadline for their target of procrastination grows closer, they are more stressed and may, thus, decide to procrastinate more to avoid this stress. Some psychologists cite such behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. Piers Steel indicated in 2010 that anxiety is just as likely to induce people to start working early as late, and that the focus of studies on procrastination should be impulsiveness. That is, anxiety will cause people to delay only if they are impulsive.
Coping responses Negative coping responses of procrastination tend to be avoidant or emotional rather than task-oriented or focused on problem-solving. Emotional and avoidant coping is employed to reduce stress but (and cognitive dissonance) associated with delaying intended and important personal goals. This option provides immediate pleasure and is consequently very attractive to impulsive procrastinators, at the point of discovery of the achievable goals at hand. There are several emotion-oriented strategies, similar to Freudian defense mechanisms, coping styles and self-handicapping. Coping responses of procrastinators include the following: Avoidance: Avoiding the location or situation where the task takes place. Denial and trivialization: Pretending that procrastinatory behavior is not actually procrastinating, but rather a task which is more important than the avoided one, or that the essential task that should be done is not of immediate importance. Distraction: Engaging or immersing oneself in other behaviors or actions to prevent awareness of the task. Descending counterfactuality: Comparing consequences of one's procrastinatory behavior with others' worse situations. Valorisation: Pointing in satisfaction to what one achieved in the meantime while one should have been doing something else. Blaming: Delusional attributions to external factors, such as rationalizing that the procrastination is due to external forces beyond one's control. Mocking: Using humor to validate one's procrastination.
Task- or problem-solving measures are taxing from a procrastinator's outlook. If such measures are pursued, it is less likely the procrastinator would remain a procrastinator. However, pursuing such measures requires actively changing one's behavior or situation to prevent and minimize the re-occurrence of procrastination. In 2006, it was suggested that neuroticism has no direct links to procrastination and that any relationship is fully mediated by conscientiousness. In 1982, it had been suggested that irrationality was an inherent feature of procrastination. "Putting things off even until the last moment isn't procrastination if there is a reason to believe that they will take only that moment". Steel et al. explained in 2001, "actions must be postponed and this postponement must represent poor, inadequate, or inefficient planning".
Cultural perspective According to Holly McGregor and Andrew Elliot (2001); Christopher Wolters (2003), academic procrastination among portions of undergraduate students has been correlated to "performance-avoidance orientation" which is one factor of the four factor model of achievement orientation. Andrew Elliot and Judith Harackiewicz (1996) showed that students with performance-avoidance orientations tended to be concerned about comparisons with their peers. These students procrastinated as a result of not wanting to look incompetent, or to avoid demonstrating a lack of ability and adopt a facade of competence for a task in front of their peers.
Gregory Arief Liem and Youyan Nie (2008) found that cultural characteristics are shown to have a direct influence on achievement orientation because it is closely aligned with most students' cultural values and beliefs. Sonja Dekker and Ronald Fischer's (2008) meta-analysis across thirteen different societies revealed that students from Western cultures tend to be motivated more by "mastery-approach orientation" because the degree of incentive value for individual achievement is strongly reflective of the values of Western culture. By contrast, most students from Eastern cultures have been found to be "performance-avoidance orientated". They often make efforts to maintain a positive image of their abilities, which they display while in front of their peers. In addition, Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu Kitayama (1991) showed that in non-Western cultures, rather than standing out through their achievements, people tend to be motivated to become part of various interpersonal relationships and to fit in with those that are relevant to them.
Research by Sushila Niles (1998) with Australian students and Sri Lankan students confirmed these differences, revealing that Australian students often pursued more individual goals, whereas Sri Lankan students usually desired more collaborative and social goals. Multiple studies by Kuo-Shu Yang and An-Bang Yu (1987, 1988, 1990) have indicated that individual achievement among most Chinese and Japanese students were measured by a fulfillment of their obligation and responsibility to their family network, not to individual accomplishments. Yang and Yu (1987) have also shown that collectivism and Confucianism are very strong motivators for achievement in many non-Western cultures because of their emphasis on cooperation in the family unit and community. Guided by these cultural values, it is believed that the individual intuitively senses the degree of pressure that differentiates his or her factor of achievement orientation.
Health perspective