SCIENCE & SOCIETY Is procrastination human nature?
Have you ever postponed a root canal at the dentist or put off writing the 70 000-word thesis for your degree? What about calling the plumber to fix that leaky tap? You're not alone. People worldwide have more often than not failed to follow through on scheduled plans. The question is, why? An international group of researchers got some answers. Their findings were recently published in the journal Psychological Science.
Procrastination has a high price. Delays that can be avoided may trigger productivity losses, but they can also wreak havoc on people's emotions, especially their self-esteem. A burning question in the minds of many researchers is whether people are programmed for procrastination.
The researchers of this study, led by Dr Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz in Germany, found that people procrastinate not because they're insincere but because they believe that tomorrow will be a better day to set their plan in motion.
They sought to find a connection between how people think of a task and their tendency to put it on the backburner for the time being. The researchers wanted to determine whether some tasks are viewed by people as being 'psychologically distant', which compels them to delay them rather than dealing with the issue at hand as soon as possible.
The sample studied consisted of a group of students who responded to questionnaires distributed by the researchers, who requested that they be completed and sent by email within a period of three weeks.
While the questions focused on routine tasks, such as opening a bank account, the researchers decided to give students different sets of instructions on how they were to respond to the questions.
One group of students had to think and write about what each activity implied about personal traits, including the type of person that has a bank account. Other students had to answer more straightforwardly, detailing information about how something works or how something like making a deposit at the bank or filling out bank forms can be completed.
This activity was used to encourage some students to think abstractly and others concretely, the researchers said. The team waited and recorded the response times to determine the differences between the two groups.
The results showed that despite the fact that the students were paid once their questionnaires were complete, the group that had to answer more abstract questions were much more likely to procrastinate than the group who had concrete problems to answer. A number of the first group even failed to complete the questionnaire in general, the team said.
The students who thought concretely emailed their responses back much faster. These participants focused on the how, when and where of doing the task. The researchers postulated that by sending in their responses more quickly, the students rose to the task to finish it, and didn't postpone it.
'Merely thinking about the task in more concrete, specific terms makes it feel like it should be completed sooner […] thus reducing procrastination,' the authors of the study wrote, adding that the results have significant implications for managers and educators that want their workers and students to kick-start their projects earlier rather than later.
Is procrastination human nature?
