The Scientific Basis for the Psychology of Procrastination

Video Games and Procrastination

Procrastination is seen as a serious problem and many factors have been claimed to be associated with it, playing video games being one of them. One of the reasons why video games may be associated with procrastination is that they can provide instant gratification and feedback while at the same time distracting from work that is less engaging and challenging. There is no confirmation yet as to whether video game players are more prone to procrastination and lower future earnings.

What does the research say?

Over 500 participants in two studies completed two surveys on video game habits and measures of procrastination tendencies.

In Study 1, participants performed an experiential discounting task, and

In Study 2 participants performed five trials adjusting for the delayed discounting task, and Both tasks assessed preferences for delayed, larger rewards.

Conclusions.

In Study 1, video game time was not significantly associated with procrastination or discounting.

In Study 2, hours of video games were not strongly associated with either procrastination or discount deferral.

However, when asked why they played, those who said to escape reality and reduce stress had more procrastination problems than those who played for entertainment, reward or social reasons. Overall, the association between procrastination and time spent playing video games was

weak but positive, r(513) = .122.

Time spent enjoying and spending time playing video games can be done for a variety of reasons, but this is only marginally related to procrastination. The lack of relationship between time spent on video games, procrastination, and delayed gratification by using only virtual payments for discounted tasks requires further investigation. However, playing video games is more than just procrastination.

Nordby K, Løkken RA, Pfuhl G. Playing video games is more than just procrastination; BMC Psychol. 2019; 7(1): 33. published 13 June 2019 doi: 10.1186 / s40359-019-0309-9

Procrastination Causes and Countermeasures

Procrastination is a common phenomenon in learning, living and social behavior.

What are the disadvantages of procrastination?

Here are the conclusions of a paper that analyzes this psychologically.

Let's start with the conclusion

Resilience, which is part of emotional adaptability, reduces procrastination.

This is what I found out.

Research Method

In February 2011, participants were recruited from among the students of Lupana University in Lüneburg (Germany). They were asked to fill out a questionnaire about their research behavior during a lecture.

The sample consisted of 172 students. (108 were female, 64 were male)

Mean age was 22.1 years (SD = 3.0).

What is Emotional Resilience and Adaptability (ERSQ)?

The ERSQ can be divided into nine specific ER skills

Awareness

Sensation

Clarity

Understanding

Acceptance of disgust

Resilience

Independence in distressing situations

Readiness to confront distressing situations

Modification of the distressing situation

Sample questions for the survey are

"I paid attention to my feelings" (awareness)

"My physical sensations were a good representation of what I was feeling" (sensation)

"I was clear about what emotions I was experiencing." (Clarity)

"I knew why I felt the way I felt" (understanding).

"I accepted my feelings.

"I felt I could handle even intense negative emotions." (Resilience)

"I did what I planned, even if it made me feel uncomfortable or anxious" (readiness to face painful situations)

"I was able to influence my negative emotions" (correction)

All of these questions should be prefaced with a phrase meaning, "What happened last week? It seems that all of these questions were asked with the words "Last week?

What is resilience in reducing procrastination?

The resilience to reduce procrastination means "being able to cope with even intense negative emotions. If you don't have a high emotional tolerance for disgust, you won't be resilient. Procrastination of all kinds is more likely to occur.

However, tolerating disgust is contrary to emotional reflection.

Normally, we avoid what we don't like.

This emotion does not have to be negative.

But the fact is that the avoidance behavior results in procrastination.

This means that if we can change our sensitivity and tolerance to disgust

So, if we can change our sensitivity and tolerance to disgust, we can reduce procrastination, according to the results of the intervention described in this paper.

As an intervention, it seems that online training was sufficient.

Marcus David D Evert b Dirk Lehr a Bernhard Seeland a Matthias Baking b

Student Procrastination

When I was in school, procrastination was just a matter of getting my summer homework done at the last minute. I gave up and didn't do the homework. I had to make a decision not to turn in my homework for the second semester. I remembered that. Since I was exempted from writing reflective essays, I had practically less time to work on it, less work, less words, etc., so I had a troublesome student life knowing how lenient the teachers were in penalizing me.

But please don't ever imitate them.

Here are some studies that analyzed psychologically the factors that cause such procrastination in students.

Study 1

261 students from a public university in Western Canada were surveyed.

They were asked to answer a 16-item questionnaire to find out why they waste time, delay, and intentionally procrastinate on things they should do.

Study 1 Results

The items gave values that were related to the expected decline in self-efficacy.

Study 2

195 students from a public university in Western Canada were surveyed.

The survey was conducted during class time and students were asked to complete a questionnaire. The content was "How much time do you spend procrastinating during the school day? The content was "How much time do you spend procrastinating during the school day?

Study 2 Results

There was a relationship between the negative elements of the questionnaire results and the decline in self-efficacy.

The average value of the questionnaire was "1~2 hours".

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2007.07.001

Procrastination in the workplace

In your workplace, do you procrastinate on some things?

There are many people in the workplace who procrastinate on issues such as, "I can do it next week," or "I can't do it now, so it's okay. In my own experience, I procrastinated on a major campaign, and the day before the campaign started, the problem caused serious trouble and I had a very difficult time.

Procrastination is considered to be a disease of our time, and it is something that organizations want to solve because it reduces the performance of work.

The research presented here investigates the causes of procrastination in the workplace.

Content of the study

The questionnaires for the study were distributed primarily in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing, China. The participants were selected from full-time employees of 32 companies in the manufacturing, service, and education sectors. Due to the diversity of the sample sources, these samples showed a wide coverage and representation.

To avoid local cultural bias and to ensure the validity of the questionnaire, preliminary in-depth interviews were conducted individually with five employees prior to formal implementation. This was done in order to ensure that the participants fully understood the questions.

We made it clear that the survey would be conducted anonymously and would be used for academic research purposes only. During the formal research phase, data was collected through a three-phase time-staggered survey over a four-month period, with a total of 400 questionnaires distributed.

The 378 validly retained questionnaires showed a valid response rate of 94.50%, with males accounting for 46.83% of these samples.

43.92% of the respondents were below 30 years of age, 52.65% were between 31-50 years of age, and 3.44% were above 51 years of age, indicating that the majority of the respondents were young or middle-aged.

The questionnaire included

Abusive bosses

Ostracizing behavior in the workplace

Procrastination in the workplace

Psychological resilience

Psychological isolation

Control variables

The study included a survey of the following topics.

The results show that procrastination is more likely to occur in workplaces with the following characteristics

Bosses act as power harassers without hesitation.

Exclusionary behavior among workplace members

They have to perform their duties at home, even when they are not working.

These characteristics have been observed.

The most influential factor related to procrastination seems to be an abusive boss.

He Q, Wu M, Wu W, Fu J. The Effect of Abusive Supervision on Employees' Work Procrastination Behavior. Front Psychol. 2021;12:596704. Published 2021 Jan Front Psychol. 2021;12:596704. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.596704