The act of delaying some task that needs to be completed is the definition of

A brief psychology of procrastination

Procrastination, simply put, is the act of postponing or delaying something that you do not want to do. Procrastination to some extent is something that most of us are guilty of in one way or another. Some procrastination can be relatively harmless. For example, the fact that before I would sit down to write in an evening I wouldn’t begin until I’ve washed the dishes, tidied up the lounge, vacuumed up and made myself (and my wife) a cup of tea - this is unlikely to cause significant delay in completing this book. Plus, it serves a benefit to what I would see as uncluttering my mind and working space. A familiar routine to get myself in the “working” frame of mind… and ultimately, less distracted by my environment. This type of procrastination is relatively harmless. However, there is procrastination that can be harmful… the type that leaves you staring at a blank computer screen for an hour, waking up in a panic during the night because of what you should have got done and leaving things to the very last minute, or past their deadline.

Being a student is a particularly important time when procrastination can become an issue. There is research to suggest that students are particularly vulnerable to procrastination and in a 2007 meta-analysis published in the Psychological Bulletin, it was found that 80%–95% of college students procrastinated on a regular basis, particularly when it came to completing assignments and coursework.

According to the book: Procrastination and Task Avoidance: Theory, Research, and Treatment, there are some major cognitive distortions that lead to academic procrastination. Students have a habit of:

Overestimating how much time they have left to perform tasks.

Overestimating how motivated they will be in the future.

Underestimating how long certain activities will take to complete.

Mistakenly assuming that they need to be in the right frame of mind to work on a project (which I do, all the time… and my wife does often when I suggest we watch a kung-fu movie and she's not “in the right kind of mood for a kung-fu movie”).

If procrastination starts to become a more present and a more overwhelming experience, then that's when support might be needed. For some individuals, procrastination can be fear and anxiety based. In this situation the “just get started” school of advice wouldn’t work at all, because it is not related to difficulties with time management. As Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University once said—“To tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up.” Realistically, what would be better would be helping this person to set tiny goals in an understandable way, with time carefully structured and blocked out for them, being mindful not to overwhelm them and ensuring that the “conditions” are optimum for avoiding unnecessary distraction.

One form of procrastination can take the shape of “task switching.” Let's bring social media back into the picture and explore this some more. Looking further into the role of Facebook in the student's multitasking/task switching was Dr. Terry Judd, working out of the University of Melbourne in 2014. Dr. Judd examined comprehensive time-based logs of students’ computer use during academic self-directed study tasks. 1249 students were analyzed, and the results showed that 99% of the sessions involved some form of multi-tasking. When students were multitasking/task switching there was a significant reduction in their focused behavior (the academic task they were initially engaged in). What we have here is a distinct inability to focus on one thing. For example, in having to write an essay, a student is likely to also have the internet at their fingertips, emails close by, a phone at the ready, perhaps the TV on in the background and music playing… opportunities for task switching and procrastination are abundant. A young person I worked with once described having social media as feeling like all their friends were in the room with them when they were trying to work.

There seems to be a growing body of research around the negatives of social media, the number of platforms one can “check-in” with their networks and the detrimental effect this can have on one's educational achievement. The “need” of adolescents to be in constant connection with their online networks can lead to various new and somewhat bizarre psychological phenomenon, for example: Phantom Vibration Syndrome.

Have you ever felt that your phone has gone off in your pocket, you’ve felt the vibration, but upon checking it you realize that that nothing had happened? Then you’ve experienced Phantom Vibration Syndrome. Essentially, what is happening here is that your body has become primed to expect to feel your phone going off, and your brain can sometimes misinterpret what it has felt, signaling to you that your phone has gone off. This highlights that there is a portion of cognitive function which is directed to your phone and message detection. It would seem that even our unconscious mind is distracting us from being solely present in the current moment or task. Unless of course there is some conspiracy that the social media companies are sending vibrations to your phone with no notification in the hopes that while you have your phone unlocked, you may as well check your socials? Thus, increasing your time on their apps and their worth as a company? Surely not? I have no idea… but there are some who believe so.

Overall, the pull of technology clearly has a detrimental impact on completing specific tasks which is applicable to there being a detrimental impact on academic performance. Research suggests it can take 23 min to re-focus and get back in “the zone” following being interrupted or distracted… and on average, we can self-interrupt every 3½ min. Add that to the knowledge we have about the pull of technology and it is a recipe for procrastination and task switching being a genuine problem for students. As time moves on and exposure to social media in various forms increases, this problem is presenting itself in some students as a kind of social media fatigue… in short, some people have had enough.

There are some schools of thought examining social media fatigue that take the position that as more people crowd social media, and more information gets shared and re-shared, people can show the tendency to back away from their social media. People are becoming overwhelmed with too many sites, too many pieces of content, too many contacts and too much time spent trying to keep up with what's going on. As social media evolves and new technology and apps are being developed to make it even more accessible, it remains important to pay attention to how people are coping with it. Do you know of anyone that has taken a break from social media for a while? You probably do… ironically, they probably posted an update telling people that they were taking a break from social media on social media.

To summarize, the educational impact of social networking may be in the improvement of working memory, verbal ability and spelling scores, yet this may lead to an overall reduction in educational levels/grades due to task switching, procrastination and cognitive distraction if the use of social networking interferes with educational tasks.

Part 2 of this book has explored the unintended consequences of using social media. Delving into the subjects of cyberbullying, unfulfilled expectations, internet addiction and the impact on education. Once I had gained knowledge surrounding the positives and negatives of social media use, I endeavored to construct my own research exploring the impact of social media on secondary aged pupils. The results were enlightening. Part 3 of this book will detail what I discovered and more importantly I feel, goes into a detailed analysis of the lived experience of teenagers who struggle with their social media usage.

Introduction

As this book clearly shows, with the exception of a few community samples (Ferrari, 1993; Sirois, 2007; Sirois & Kitner, 2015), most studies on procrastination relate to academic procrastination and have been conducted with college and university student samples. There has been very little research attention to procrastination at work, and the few studies that have been conducted do not always address well-being but instead focus on other issues in relation to procrastination, for example, the types of jobs procrastinators occupy (Nguyen, Steel, & Ferrari, 2013). This chapter addresses procrastination at work and how it may affect well-being based upon research focusing on avoidance behavior at work, as will be explained later. After a brief discussion of how to define procrastination, an overview is provided of what we may learn from the studies conducted so far. A conceptual framework is then presented that may guide future research in this area.

Principle #8—Motivation is related to learning and performance but causality is an uncertainty

Terrell Howard Bell, former Secretary of Education in the Ronald Reagan administration, had a clear vision about education. Bell claimed that there were only three things necessary to ensure effective education. The first was motivation, the second was motivation, and the third was motivation! However, can we reliably conclude that motivation is the cure for everything that ails education? Probably not (this is a research question methodologically impossible to answer), although thousands of studies have investigated the relationship between motivation and a variety of learning and performance variables.

Ideally, when investigating motivation, the MD seeks to determine the causality of behavior. Armed with knowledge of what factors result in specific behaviors, the investigator can determine appropriate strategies to mediate the undesirable behavior or sustain that which is desired. Although the ultimate goal is behavioral change, sometimes only behavioral consequences, not motives, are addressed. For example, one of the most frequent issues with which teachers wrestle in the classroom is academic procrastination (Katz, Eilot, & Nevo, 2013), where a resounding 75–90% of undergraduate college students are estimated to delay completing academic tasks, such as homework (Steel, 2007). Typical solutions used to address the homework problem include giving extra credit for timely completion of work, granting special privileges to homework completers, or perhaps overemphasizing the role of homework when determining course grades. However, none of these “solutions” actually addresses the reasons underlying academic procrastination, including questionable beliefs about learner competency, lack of interest in the subject, or the perception of a controlling teaching environment and loss of autonomy. Teachers addressing academic procrastination with incentives may successfully change behavior, but rewards do little to address why students fail to complete homework in the first place.

The homework dilemma brings to the forefront one of the most salient issues when interpreting scientific evidence: establishing a clear interpretive distinction between correlation and causality. The homework example suggested that certain factors cause procrastination, while teacher incentives, such as grades, are associated with reducing academic procrastination. My favorite example of the difference between causality and correlation is a variation on Stanovich’s claim that appliance ownership can influence birth control (Stanovich, 2013). As many people know, most single people only need a two-slice toaster because they live alone and must regulate their carbohydrate intake to maintain positive self-esteem. Four or six slice toasters are reserved for people with families, restaurants, and school cafeteria lunch ladies. Thus, there is a positive association between family size and type of toaster. However, I sincerely hope you don’t believe that smaller toasters reduce fertility! In fact, there are more plausible explanations for a large family size than the girth of your toaster. The proclivity for snap judgments creates vulnerability to accept potentially spurious interpretations of data, which happens when you falsely assume the influence of one factor on another. Wrongly attributing causality to a correlational relationship masks the true causal factor underlying the behavior of interest and creates a situation ripe for misinterpretation. Now upgrade your toaster, or at least read Stanovich’s exceptional book How to Think Straight about Psychology.

Due to a variety of methodological issues, the bulk of motivational research is correlational. This doesn’t mean that certain motivational variables cannot be identified as casual factors; instead, it means that the nature of motivational research is not conducive to experimental research that seeks to investigate causality. Motivation has been linked to literally dozens of variables, including some highly influential in learning and performance. Maehr and Meyer (1997) in their assessment of the state of motivational research at the time listed over two dozen factors related to adaptive motivation, including persistence, learning, achievement, creativity, effort invested in learning, positive emotions, school interest, and, of course, the quality of student knowledge. Not surprisingly, classrooms that comprise learners with high academic motivation have fewer classroom management issues, promote a stronger sense of learning community, and support a context of focused learner engagement (Ames, 1990; Perry, Turner, & Meyer, 2006).

More recent research broadly examines individual motivation and strategy differences among individuals. Studies frequently investigate the role of socioeconomic factors, culture, and other contextual and social influences on learning and performance outcomes. The common thread throughout these studies is understanding how interactivity among motivational variables influences optimal motivation for learning and performance. Perhaps, the most significant revelation is the idea of reciprocity between learning outcomes and sustaining personal beliefs about motivation (Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2008). As students encounter success in learning, motivation to learn is enhanced. Students begin to believe in their own success and gain confidence that the strategies they use are influential in the learning process. When the learning strategies lead to success, students are motivated to continue using the effective strategy. Reciprocally, learner perception of content mastery leads to reaching academic goals, further improving motivation. The reciprocal relationship becomes a powerful cycle for the success of the student. Reciprocity can be equally devastating when students develop counterproductive beliefs and exhibit maladaptive motivation patterns when learning obstacles or failures are encountered. Although these findings imply causality, only under rare circumstances should we confidently conclude that one factor actually causes the other to happen.

Health Behaviors and Procrastination Among Students

University life and emerging adulthood are potential risk factors for the adoption of dysfunctional dietary practices (e.g., binge eating), resulting in weight gain and obesity. In fact, the onset of eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa or binge-eating disorder occurs during this transitional phase due to the high frequency of weight loss/control behaviors, the dissatisfaction with body image and peer’s attitudes regarding unhealthy behavior (Hoerr, Bokram, Lugo, Bivins, & Keast, 2002; Vohs, Heatherton, & Herrin, 2001). Students’ dietary behavior is associated with dysfunctional dietary perceptions, low body-image satisfaction, adjustment difficulties, and sleep disturbances (Nelson & McNamara-Barry, 2005). Other researchers also suggest that university students report higher levels of alcohol use as well as occasional to regular episodes of drunkenness in comparison to their peers (Colby, Colby, & Raymond, 2009). Alcohol use is reduced at the end of university studies, after the acquisition of the adult identity and the assumption of adult responsibilities such as a full-time job, marriage, and family (Arnett, 2000). Other risky health behaviors such as smoking, high-speed driving or driving while being drunk, as well as sex without precautions also initiate during this period. These behaviors are seen in the context of identity exploration, and are motivated by the need to live important experiences before getting constrained by adult roles. Occasional alcohol consumption, smoking, and substance use also represent some of the coping behaviors for daily stressors that students experience. Subsequently, nutrition and exercise attitudes are influenced by those behaviors and lead anew to dysfunctional coping techniques, resulting in an increased risk for developing a chronic disease in the future (James, 2010). Fortunately, risky behaviors tend to decline as emerging adults grow older and adopt new adult roles (Arnett, 2000).

Procrastination, characterized by self-regulation difficulties in the form of delaying the start and/or completion of necessary and important tasks (Ferrari, 2010; Ferrari & Tice, 2000), also constitutes an integral part of students’ everyday life. According to the results of two meta-analyses, men and young people are more likely to procrastinate, in comparison to women or older people (Steel, 2007; Van Eerde, 2000). Internationally, it is estimated that 20–25% of adult men and women could be characterized as chronic procrastinators (Ferrari, O’Callaghan, & Newbegin, 2005; Harriott, Ferrari & Dovidio, 1996). In a Greek study among university students, 47% of the participants identified themselves as chronic procrastinators (Argiropoulou, 2015). Moreover, academic procrastination constitutes one of the most common and serious problems of university students, both in Greece and internationally. It is estimated that 80–95% of students procrastinate at some point of their lives (O’Brien, 2002), 75% of them believe that they procrastinate toward meeting their study obligations (Potts, 1987), 50% systematically procrastinate (Day, Mensink, & O’ Sullivan, 2000; Haycock, 1993; Micek, 1982; Onwuegbuzie, 2000; Solomon & Rothblum, 1984), and 40% of students report more serious difficulties (Rothblum, 1990). Prevalence of academic procrastination among Greek university students is also high. According to the results of a recent study, 40.5% of students self-identified as frequent academic procrastinators (Argiropoulou, Kalantzi-Azizi, & Ferrari, in press).

There are two main traditions in studying procrastination (Johnson & Bloom, 1995). Some researchers view procrastination as a stable personality trait (Ferrari, Johnson, McCown, 1995; Schouwenburg & Lay, 1995; Van Eerde, 2000), while others study procrastination as a behavior closely related to the characteristics of a given situation or task (Harris & Sutton, 1983; Rothblum, 1990; Van Eerde, 2000). One of the most stable findings derived from the first line of research is that there is a strong negative relationship between procrastination and conscientiousness (Lay, Kovacs, & Danto, 1998; Lee, Kelly & Edwads, 2006; Milgram & Tenne, 2000; Schouwenburg & Lay, 1995; Steel, 2007; Van Eerde, 2003; Watson, 2001). In contrast, a positive relationship has been found between procrastination and neuroticism (Van Eerde, 2003; Johnson & Bloom, 1995; Milgram & Tenne, 2000; Schouwenburg & Lay, 1995; Steel, 2007; Steel, Brothen, & Wambach, 2001; Watson, 2001). One of the most stable findings from studies that examine situational correlates of procrastination is its relationship with task attractiveness (Steel, 2007) and time distance from reward (Schouwenburg & Groenewoud, 2001; Strongman & Burt, 2000).

Procrastination is also positively associated with stress (Sirois, 2007; Sirois, Melia-Gordon, & Pychyl, 2003; Tice & Baumeister, 1997). Accordingly, procrastination can be conceptualized as a personality trait that increases illness risk, since procrastinators not only experience more stress caused by constantly putting off necessary and important tasks, but they are also less likely to practice health behaviors (Sirois et al., 2003). As Sirois (2007) points out in describing the procrastination-health model (see Chapter 4, Procrastination, Stress, and Chronic Health Conditions: A Temporal Perspective), a possible explanation for this could be found in Suls and Rittenhouse’s (1990) “personality as a predictor of dangerous behaviour” model, suggesting that certain personality traits—that are typical of procrastinators, such as increased levels of neuroticism and low levels of conscientiousness—lead to more exposure to situations that elicit reactivity, create unnecessary stress, increase the tendency of an individual to engage in unhealthy or risky behaviors, hinder preventative behaviors and compliance with medical regimens, and thus increase illness risk. Other studies also indicate that stress negatively affects wellness behaviors (Baum & Posluszny, 1999; Hudd et al., 2000; Steptoe, Wardie, Pollard, & Canaan, 1996), especially among students (Hudd et al., 2000; Lawrence & Schank, 1993). In fact, previous research suggests that procrastination is associated with less frequent practice of wellness behaviors (e.g., healthy dietary habits, exercise; Sirois, 2004a, 2004b; Sirois et al., 2003), because they are perceived as challenging or unpleasant (Turk & Meichenbaum, 1991). Procrastination is also associated with more frequent practice of unhealthy behaviors (e.g., smoking, substance use; Sirois & Pychyl, 2002), delays in treating health problems, fewer household safety behaviors, less frequent dental and medical check-ups, and more acute health problems (Sirois, 2007; Sirois et al., 2003; Sirois & Pychyl, 2002). Finally, procrastinators tend to use avoidant coping styles, such as drug or alcohol consumption, in an effort to cope with stress (Sirois & Kitner, 2015; Sirois & Pychyl, 2002).

Challenges

As young people make the transition from the relatively structured nature of the secondary school environment to the more unstructured postsecondary context, a range of motivational issues can come into play, with these issues potentially having a greater influence on those students with learning disabilities than those students without. For example, in a Canadian study, academic procrastination was higher for the undergraduate students with LD in comparison to their peers, a problematic result in that higher procrastination was related to lower metacognitive self-regulation and lower self-efficacy for self-regulation within this group (Klassen, Krawchuk, Lynch, & Rajani, 2008). A follow-up interview study with 12 undergraduates with LD examined the correlates and antecedents of procrastination. The students felt that their learning disabilities influenced their levels of procrastination in that their procrastination increased when their cognitive and, to a certain extent, metacognitive skills decreased. These skill-based procrastination antecedents were intricately linked with students’ views of self. As one student stated, “I’m perfectly fine with myself and who I am, but my writing skills are low, and I know it, and my confidence is low in that area, so that affects the level of my procrastination for sure” (Klassen et al., p. 142).

Other researchers have examined motivational constructs such as anxiety and self-efficacy. Greater anxiety may contribute to poorer academic performance for college students with learning disabilities (Prevatt, Welles, Li, & Proctor, 2010). The effects of short-term and long-term stress contribute to increases in anxiety that over time may lead to more profound psychological concerns and poorer overall mental health, thereby presenting additional challenges for educators when developing programs and interventions to support students with LD in higher education (Wilson, Armstrong, Furrie, & Walcot, 2009). Test anxiety may be a particularly salient and debilitating form of anxiety for these students (LaFrance Holzer, Madaus, Bray, & Kehle, 2009). With respect to self-efficacy, in one study, American college students with LD had lower levels of career self-efficacy than other students despite having engaged in more career development activities during high school. While they tended not to see their learning disabilities as a barrier to their academic success, they were also limited in their understanding of what their learning disabilities entailed (Hitchings et al., 2010).

Self-determination, a critical topic with respect to the postsecondary success of students with learning disabilities, has important links to motivation. Self-determination can be seen with respect to developing greater autonomy in enhancing one’s competence within a network of relationships (see Self-Determination Theory [SDT]; Deci & Ryan, 2008). Self-determined college and university students with LD develop the persistence to work through their academic obstacles while building upon their areas of competence (Anctil, Ishikawa, & Tao Scott, 2008). They use their self-determination skills to seek on-campus services, to build stronger relationships with faculty members, and to increase their self-awareness, all of which they view as critical to their success (Evans Getzel & Thoma, 2008). Although her sample was limited (48 completed surveys, four interviews), Russo Jameson (2007) found that self-determined individuals with disabilities (most of which were learning disabilities) had greater retention in their program and higher GPAs than those students with low levels of self-determination. Clearly, self-determination is critical for postsecondary success for students with LD.

5.5 Terror Management and Psychological Disorder

TMT posits that psychological equanimity requires a well-functioning anxiety buffer that entails faith in one's worldview, self-esteem, and close interpersonal attachments. Threats to any of these anxiety-buffer components signal a potential for anxiety that typically engenders defensive efforts to restore the integrity of the system and thus ward off this anxiety. From this perspective, many of the vicissitudes of thought, emotion, and behavior in daily life reflect attempts to respond to fluctuations in the functioning of this system. But the effectiveness of this anxiety-buffering system varies across persons and situations, leaving some people secure and confident and others riddled with anxiety. TMT follows many previous theories in suggesting that many forms of psychological dysfunction and disorder result from, or are exacerbated by, ineffective control of anxiety and reflect maladaptive attempts to cope with such malfunctions.

Consistent with the idea that many psychological disorders result from an inability to effectively manage anxiety, high levels of anxiety are central components of many DSM-V diagnoses, including not only the many problems that fall under the blanket category of anxiety disorders but also others where anxiety itself is not the defining feature, such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse, sexual difficulties, and schizophrenia. Anxiety is widely recognized as a common comorbid problem associated with many psychological disorders. And high levels of anxiety or neuroticism have been found to be associated with a wide range of other undesirable psychological states and traits, such as guilt, shame, uncertainty, shyness, procrastination, academic difficulties, and interpersonal problems. Although most of this research is correlational, difficulties controlling anxiety seem likely to play at least some role in the etiology of diverse psychological problems.

Research has shown that reminders of death increase the severity of psychological symptoms of some disorders. For example, Strachan et al. (2007) found that MS led diagnosed spider phobics to judge spiders depicted in photos as more dangerous and to spend less time looking at them, people high in obsessive–compulsive tendencies to spend more time and use more soap and water when washing their hands, and people high in social anxiety to become more avoidant of social interactions. Following Yalom (1980), Strachan et al. (2007) interpreted their findings as reflecting participants’ tendency to focalize their fear of death onto smaller objects that are easier to control. Although there is nothing, one can do to avoid death, spiders, germs, and embarrassing interactions with others can be avoided if one is sufficiently vigilant.

Additional research found that concerns about death underlie psychological dissociation in response to trauma, and that individuals who experience intense fear of death during a traumatic event are especially likely to dissociate and subsequently develop PTSD (Gershuny, Cloitre, & Otto, 2003). Moreover, in 2005, New Yorkers reminded of their mortality and then asked to recall how they felt during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or when they watched video footage of the attacks, reported greater dissociative reactions, such as feeling like they were outside of their own body, compared to a control group of students who thought about being in pain or an upcoming exam (Kosloff et al., 2006). These dissociative reactions in turn led to more anxieties about the future.

Another study (Abdollahi, Pyszczynski, Maxfield, & Luszczynska, 2011a, 2011b) tracked people who had survived a traumatic earthquake in Zarand, Iran, in 2005, in which over 1500 people perished and almost 7000 had to evacuate their homes. When reminded of their own death or the earthquake a month later, survivors who did not dissociate in the aftermath of the earthquake responded without anxiety. They instead responded to MS by expressing negativity toward foreigners, a typical defensive maneuver to manage terror. However, survivors who did dissociate during the earthquake, when reminded of their mortality or the quake a month later, reported a great deal of anxiety and did not express antipathy toward foreigners. The usual means of terror management, bolstering one's own group at the expense of others, was apparently unavailable to the survivors who had dissociated. And 2 years later, these high dissociators were far more likely to have developed PTSD than those who had not dissociated and continued to show atypical responses to MS. This absence of defensive response to MS mediated the relation between dissociation at the time of the quake and PTSD 2 years later, suggesting that this disruption of normal terror management defenses plays an important role in the emergence of this disorder. Similar results have been found for Polish victims of domestic violence (Kesebir et al., 2011) and survivors of a civil war in the Ivory Coast (Chatard et al., 2012).

Bedtime procrastination versus general procrastination

Like other forms of procrastination, going to bed too late involves delaying an intended course of action: in this case, hitting the pillow. In this sense, bedtime procrastination may be a form of procrastination that is in many ways comparable to other forms of procrastination such as academic procrastination, delaying the start of your diet, or procrastinating saving for retirement. In line with this view, there is a rather strong correlation between general procrastination (as measured by Lay’s General Procrastination Scale; Lay, 1986) and bedtime procrastination (r = 0.60, Kroese et al., 2014a), suggesting that people who are more likely to procrastinate in general in their daily life are also more likely to go to bed later than they intended.

One explanation for the association between general procrastination and bedtime procrastination could be that people who have been delaying their duties during the day still need to finish work at night, preventing them from going to bed on time. For example, if someone has to submit a conference abstract before the deadline tomorrow morning, but has been postponing this long-known task such that he or she has still nothing written down when leaving work at the end of the day, the person may end up having no other option than writing it at night, even though it could interfere with an intention to go to bed early. Having said that, our MTurk study discussed earlier revealed that “obligations” were only mentioned by a minority of people as a reason for going to bed late, while fun activities seemed to account for a much larger proportion of bedtime procrastination. Thus, it would not be valid to assume that bedtime procrastination occurs as a mere consequence of general procrastination.

The most prominent candidate to explain the relationship between general and bedtime procrastination, then, would be a common underlying personality trait of having low self-control—a personality characteristic that reflects the extent to which people are able to resist temptations and inhibit their impulses (Tangney et al., 2004; see Fig. 5.1). Low self-control would be a typical explanation of why people tend to postpone their duties and fail to complete a conference abstract in time, while it would also be plausibly related to being unable to quit doing fun activities (e.g., watching Orange Is the New Black) for the sake of other goals such as getting sufficient sleep. General procrastination has indeed been commonly associated with low self-control, and is even considered a typical illustration of it (Baumeister, 2002). Accordingly, bedtime procrastination is also associated with low self-control (r = −0.39; Kroese et al., 2014b). A composite measure of scales related to self-regulation (i.e., self-control, conscientiousness, impulsivity and action control) yielded a similar negative relationship to bedtime procrastination (r = −0.52; Kroese et al., 2014a). This suggests that people who are generally easily distracted from their long-term goals are also more likely to delay their bedtimes.

In line with these findings, we suggest that, like many other health-related behaviors (e.g., breaking a diet, having unprotected sex, drinking too much alcohol), bedtime procrastination can be regarded as an instance of self-regulatory failure (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; van Eerde, 2000; Steel, 2007). Instead of resisting the temptation to look for funny cartoons online or binge-watch a TV show, procrastinators indulge, jeopardizing higher-order goals in the service of immediate gratification. In other words, bedtime procrastination, like other forms of procrastination, often involves “giving in to feel good” (Sirois & Pychyl, 2013), even though doing so may come at the expense of well-being in the near future as well as in the long run (see Chapter 10, Temporal Views of Procrastination, Health, and Well-Being).

An important question in this regard is whether procrastinators give in to temptation deliberately (by choosing not to go to bed), or whether lying on the couch watching TV is an act that occurs mindlessly. It is only quite recently that these two separate routes toward self-regulatory failure—deliberate versus impulsive—have been clearly distinguished. Research on self-regulation failure originally focused on mere impulsive “breakdowns of willpower.” Prominent models of self-regulation distinguish two processes that determine behavior: one impulsive or “hot” route, and one reflective or “cool” route (dual-process models, e.g., Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999). Whereas the reflective route is directed by goals and long-term interests, the impulsive route is oriented toward immediate pleasure. According to these models, self-regulatory failure is due to the impulsive system taking precedence over the reflective system, for example, because people are in “hot states” that trigger hedonic orientations and inhibit long-term goals. Examples of such hot states are mental fatigue, being under the influence of alcohol, or being under high cognitive load (Hofmann, Friese, & Strack, 2009). Thus, (only) when people have sufficient willpower to override their hedonic impulses and favor the reflective system, successful self-regulation should follow. Recent research, however, has challenged the idea that self-regulatory failure is caused by impulsive processes only. Instead, deliberate rationalization processes such as self-licensing have been shown to contribute to goal-disruptive behavior as well (De Witt Huberts, Evers, & De Ridder, 2014). For example, when people feel they have exerted a lot of effort, when something positive (or negative!) just happened, or when it is a “special occasion,” they may feel licensed to indulge in temptation. This would then not be attributed to a lack of willpower or a dominant impulsive system, but is rather a reasoned route toward self-regulatory failure.

The same line of reasoning may apply to bedtime procrastination. One reason people may not go to bed is because they do not have the willpower to do so (e.g., they are very tired and completely immersed in an engaging game), while another reason may be because they simply do not want to (e.g., they consciously decide they need some extra time to unwind). This is a relevant distinction, not only for the bedtime procrastination context but also for procrastination research in general. For one, these different routes to procrastination may require different types of interventions. In this context, it is interesting to think again about the 10% of participants in the previously discussed study (Nauts et al. 2014) who mentioned positive consequences of going to bed later than planned. Although the data suggested that for most people the positive consequences were unanticipated, there could be a small subsample who deliberately decide to delay their bedtimes because they give priority to other activities, and who benefit from feeling relaxed after having taken some time for themselves to unwind from their stressful daily lives. These people would not be bedtime procrastinators, even if their preference for having “slack time” means incurring negative effects on their health. On the other hand, there may be people who deliberately decide to procrastinate while knowing they will regret it the next morning. Thus, in line with recent suggestions in other self-regulatory domains, it seems reasonable to expect that procrastination (general as well as bedtime procrastination) can follow an impulsive or deliberate route. Specifically, people may deliberately come up with excuses as a license to watch just one more episode of their favorite TV show before turning off the TV and turning in, or they may mindlessly keep watching.

4.3 What mediating and moderating factors have been investigated to explain the relationship between academic self-efficacy and academic performance of university students and what do they report?

Of the specific mediation pathways tested, effort regulation and academic procrastination appear to at least partially mediate the relationship between ASE and academic performance. This suggests that a student's ability to regulate the amount of effort dedicated to learning tasks, in the face of boredom or other distractions, partially facilitates and explains the relationship between ASE and performance. It appears the higher a student's level of ASE, the more likely effort will be expended on a learning task, which is likely to result in greater levels of academic performance. This is a logical conclusion and is supported by previous research findings (Mega et al., 2013). Weiser and Riggio (2010) reported ASE positively mediated the relationship between parental involvement and achievement, suggesting that parental support and involvement in the learning process can also influence student levels of ASE and subsequent academic success.

Academic self-efficacy is also implicated in several moderating relationships with academic performance, with ASE interacting with several cognitive and non-cognitive variables to influence performance. Academic self-efficacy appears to be positively moderated by non-cognitive variables such as time on task (Tabak et al., 2009) and cognitive factors such as emotional intelligence (Adeyemo, 2007), with negative emotions negatively moderating the ASE and academic performance relationship (Villavicencio & Bernardo, 2013). The personality trait neuroticism also appears to moderate the relationship between ASE and performance, with high levels of neuroticism negatively impacting on academic performance at high and low levels of ASE only (De Feyter et al., 2012).

Academic self-efficacy has also shown to act as a negative moderator on several variables that correlate with academic performance. This includes academic procrastination and academic performance (Balkis, 2011), whereby high levels of ASE result in lower levels of academic procrastination and higher subsequent achievement. Finally, ASE negatively moderated the relationship between final examination grade and overall GPA (Davis, 2009), with higher levels of ASE decreasing the strength of the relationship between final examination grade and overall GPA. This suggests that high ASE may result in overconfidence and, in turn, reduced preparedness for final examinations and lower results. Consequently, the relationship between the examination score achieved in this subject examination and overall course average (GPA) would be affected.

Overall, current findings identify multiple, potential mediating factors between ASE and academic performance, particularly through the motivational variable effort regulation. However, it was also observed in this review that many of these mediation effects have yet to be replicated or tested in competition with other putative mediation pathways in a more comprehensive model. Moreover, the over-reliance on cross-sectional designs, and occasional reversal of roles of variables in these models (such that goal orientation was a mediator in one context and the independent variable in another; Coutinho & Neuman, 2008; Hsieh et al., 2012), means that the direction and causal nature of these mediation pathways remain unclear. As several authors have contended (e.g., Phan, 2009), it is also plausible that bi-directional relationships exist between these two motivational variables, which influence each other, and academic performance through regulatory feedback loops.

1 Introduction

Have you ever delayed something that you thought should be done right away, even though you knew that delaying it would be bad? If so, you have engaged in irrational delay, or procrastination. Most people recognize it as something they do occasionally. However, procrastination may also be a chronic tendency a habit of needless delaying things that need to be done (Ferrari, Diaz-Morales, O'Callaghan, Diaz, & Argumedo, 2007). If this is the case, chances are that you know it is difficult to get rid of, even if you wish to stop behaving like this. Particularly among students, chronic procrastination appears to be problematic. Many studies have shown that procrastination affects students' grades and well-being; procrastination may have severe consequences for academic achievement (Kim & Seo, 2015). Because the vast majority of the studies on procrastination focuses on academic procrastination, i.e., procrastination of study-relevant activities of university students, the following discussion of this phenomenon is, strictly speaking, a discussion of academic procrastination.

Many studies have been conducted on procrastination. Several meta-analyses have combined the effect sizes of the studies measuring procrastination in relation to other psychological variables, each with a somewhat different focus. The earlier meta-analyses (Steel, 2007; Van Eerde, 2003a, 2003b; van Eerde, 2004) provided a general overview of how procrastination is related to many variables, such as personality, outcomes in terms of academic performance, and mental health. More recent meta-analyses have addressed specific topics, focusing on the relation between procrastination and time perspective (Sirois, 2014), coping (Sirois & Kitner, 2015), and academic performance (Kim & Seo, 2015). Overall, these meta-analyses show that procrastination is detrimental to individuals’ health and well-being, as well as their achievements. As such, it is important to refine our knowledge on procrastination interventions.

An important debate surrounding the topic of procrastination concerns its stability. Can people change this behavior? On the one hand, the research indicates that it is stable, at least some may be attributed to a genetic component (Gustavson et al., 2017; Gustavson, Miyake, Hewitt, & Friedman, 2014), and that there are strong relations with relatively stable variables, such as conscientiousness and impulsivity (Steel, 2007). On the other hand, the research also suggests that over the course of a lifetime people may change their procrastination behavior. Procrastination is negatively related to people's age, and one specific group, i.e., men under thirty, appear to procrastinate most (Beutel et al., 2016). Another indication that procrastination may be overcome is that many self-help books have been written on how to tackle procrastination (e.g., Burka & Yuen, 2008). Several interventions to overcome procrastination have been developed. Not all have been based on research evidence, but some studies have been devoted to the effects of these interventions using systematic and scientific approaches.

The current study focuses on these intervention studies. We integrated the effects of these studies meta-analytically to assess whether, and if so to what extent, procrastination decreases after an intervention. It is the first attempt of systematizing and synthesizing the effect sizes of procrastination interventions. This systematization enables us to compare studies in order to establish whether some types of interventions (e.g., therapy) obtained larger effects than others. It also enables us to assess if, and if so to what extent, changes after an intervention endure. That is, whether studies indicate that changes may last up to a certain period following the intervention.

With this meta-analysis, we aim to contribute to the literature by providing an average effect size of quantitative intervention studies on procrastination. By doing so, we offer a tentative answer to the question whether interventions actually help to reduce procrastination. Our second contribution is to provide insight into the relative effectiveness of the different interventions by focusing on their design characteristics in terms of content and application. This might help counselors, coaches, and others who aim to help procrastinators. Our findings offer implications for research on and guidance of those who suffer from procrastination by summarizing previous work and pointing out which approaches appear to be most promising for the future. Our analysis may also indicate whether certain interventions may not appear to be worthwhile pursuing, possibly saving time and effort for all those involved.

In the following, we will first discuss procrastination in more detail, elaborating on how it has been conceptualized. We will then provide an overview of what has been done so far to overcome it, and how procrastination may be measured. Subsequently, we will present our meta-analysis.