(the Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology) Joseph R. Ferrari, Judith L. Johnson, William G. McCown (Auth.)-Procrastination and Task Avoidance_ Theory, Research, And Treatment-Springer US (199 [PDF]

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PROCRASTINATION AND TASK AVOIDANCE THEORY, RESEARCH, AND TREATMENT



THE PLENUM SERIES IN SOCIAL/CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY Series Editor: C. R. Snyder University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas



Current Volumes in this Series: AGGRESSIVE DEHA VIOR Current Perspectives Edited by L. Rowell Huesmann DESIRE FOR CONTROL Personality, Social, and Clinical Perspectives Jerry M. Burger THE ECOLOGY OF AGGRESSION Arnold P. Goldstein EFFICACY, AGENCY, AND SELF-ESTEEM Edited by Michael H. Kernis HUMAN LEARNED HELPLESSNESS A Coping Perspective Mario Mikulincer PATHOLOGICAL SELF-CRITICISM Assessment and Treatment Raymond M. Bergner PROCRASTINATION AND TASK AVOIDANCE Theory, Research, and Treatment Joseph R. Ferrari, Judith L. Johnson, and William G. McCown SELF-EFFICACY, ADAPTATION, AND ADJUSTMENT Theory, Research, and Application Edited by James E. Maddux SELF-ESTEEM The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard Edited by Roy F. Baumeister THE SELF-KNOWER A Hero under Control Robert A. Wicklund and Martina Eckert A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher.



PROCRASTINATION AND TASK AVOIDANCE THEORY, RESEARCH, AND TREATMENT JOSEPH



R.



FERRARI



L.



JOHNSON



DePaul University Chicago, Illinois



JUDITH



Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania



WILLIAM



G. MCCOWN



Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research Orangeburg, New York AND ASSOCIATES



Springer Science+Business Media, LLC



Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data On file



ISBN 978-1-4899-0229-0 ISBN 978-1-4899-0227-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0227-6 ©1995 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1995 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995



10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher



To my wife Sharon and my children Catherine (Katie), Christina, and Jonathan for their inspiration and encouragement -Joseph R. Ferrari To our families and students for their support and assistance -Judith L. Johnson -William G. McCown



ASSOCIATES



KIRK R. BLANKSTEIN, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J lA3 GORDON L. FLETT, Department of Psychology, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada M3J IP3 PAUL L. HEWITT, Department of Psychology, University of WInnipeg, WInnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N2 CLARRY LAY, Department of Psychology, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada M3J IP3 THOMAS R. MARTIN, Department of Psychology, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada M3J IP3 HENRI C. SCHOUWENBURG, Department of Student Support, University of Groningen, 9700 AB Groningen, The Netherlands



vii



FOREWORD



Procrastination is a fascinating, highly complex human phenomenon for which the time has come for systematic theoretical and therapeutic effort. The present volume reflects this effort. It was a labor of love to read this scholarly, timely book-the first of its kind on the topic. It was especially encouraging to find that its authors are remarkably free of the phenomenon they have been investigating. One might have expected the opposite. It has often been argued that people select topics that trouble them and come to understand their problems better by studying or treating them in others. This does not appear to be true of the procrastination researchers represented in this book. I base this conclusion on two simple observations. First, the work is replete with recent references and the book itself has reached the reader scarcely a year following its completion. Second, when one considers the remarkable pace of programmatic research by these contributors during the past decade, it is clear that they are at the healthy end of the procrastination continuum. The fascinating history of the term procrastination is well documented in this book. The term continues to conjure up contrasting, eloquent images-especially for poets. When Edward Young wrote in 1742, "Procrastination is the Thief of Time," he was condemning the waste of the most precious of human commodities. When more recently, in 1927, Marquis wrote that "procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday," he regarded this human frailty with bemused tolerance. Both meanings are retained today-the former for moderate to severe forms of indecision and delay, and the latter for less consequential transgressions. The contributors to this volume offer the reader their personal reasons for becoming interested in procrastination. My own interest began 10 years ix



x



FOREWORD



ago when a graduate student asked me to serve as his thesis adviser on the ~opic. After reading the few published articles available at the time, I suggested that he investigate procrastination in everyday life-the extent to which one deals efficiently and effectively with the many minor tasks of daily living-rather than more conventional topics, such as academic procrastination or neurotic indecision. In retrospect, this suggestion came out of my unique cultural experience as an American who had settled in Israel. Hand,ling the routines of daily living is, in fact, far more difficult in Israel than in the United States. For example, few service establishmentsfinancial, municipal, cultural, or recreational-are open at the same time (e.g., 9-5) during the week. Banks, post offices, museums, and department stores all have different opening and closing times, as well as different schedules for different days of the week. Furthe~ Israel is far more bureaucratic than the United States and requires many more documents, even for minor matters. I found the ability to deal promptly, efficiently, and effectively with the routine tasks of daily living in Israel to be a valuable asset, and the absence of this ability to be a debilitating stressor. This personal awareness permitted me to make the procrastinationhassle connection when I first encountered Lazarus's work on daily hassles. In my split (American/Israeli) brain, procrastinating on the many routine tasks of daily living becomes a proximal cause for the intense, chronic experience of feeling hassled that leads, in turn, to adverse psychological and physical consequences. People who engage in chronic task avoidance, but are affectively indifferent to it, suffer only adverse practical consequences of their dilatory behavior. People who engage in chronic task avoidance and are upset about it suffer adverse psychological consequences as well. Several kinds of negative appraisals may arise in the context of chronic task avoidance associated with dysphoriC affect. These appraisals threaten several personal characteristics that are cherished by most people: Self-control, effeetance or control over the environment, and self-esteem. These kinds of appraisals serve as expectancies that produce task avoidance, or as conclusions that follow from it, or both. Interest in the relationship of procrastinatory behavior, dysphoric affect elicited by this behavior, and adverse expectancies is reflected in this book. Procrastination is as much a consequence of adverse preexisting personality characteristics and life experiences as it is an agent for bringing about adverse consequences in its own right. This volume is well-balanced in its emphasis on the antecedents and consequents of procrastination, and documents the fruitful interplay between programmatic research on both aspects. Research on the former enhances diagnosis and identification of the relevant pathological etiological factors that produce procrastination. Research on the latter ascertains the degree and kind of the



xi



FOREWORD



pathology that follows chronic procrastination. The findings from both approaches provide the procrastination therapist with theoretical perspectives, tools to measure relevant variables before, during, and after treatment, and a wide variety of treatment techniques. The closing chapters of the volume deal with treatment and are fascinating for the reader and valuable for the clinician. Notwithstanding the difficulty, the field has reached the point where systematic treatment studies are possible. This writer would like to make a modest proposal: To constitute a national task force to develop criteria for diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of procrastination disorders. Some years ago the American Psychiatric Association introduced some degree of order, uniformity, reliability, and validity in dealing with psychiatric disorders and behavioral disabilities. A similar collaboration by researchers and clinicians today may develop for procrastination the same kind of operationally defined criteria found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSM) for established psychiatric and behavioral disorders. There will soon be a body of knowledge, an armamentarium of diagnostic tools, treatment techniques, and treatment evaluation tools to justify launching such a project with reference to procrastination. This project would be launched with full awareness that this codified body of knowledge will undergo modification as clinical and epidemiological studies provide new information on diagnosiS, assessment, treatment, and evaluation of treatment effectiveness. NORMAN



A. MILGRAM



Tel Aviv University



PREFACE



Before we proposed the idea to the series editor, C. R. Snyder, we were unclear about the direction and potential content of the present book. One of the authors wanted to write a theoretical book. Another wanted an edited volume that would neatly summarize the growing amount of research regarding procrastination. The third leaned heavily toward a clinically oriented monograph that would appeal primarily to therapists working with chronic procrastinators. We were not convinced which of these directions would be most useful, but deftnitely wanted to offer many of the major procrastination researchers the opportunity to contribute. However, we also realized the problems inherent in edited books, especially in an area where the research tradition is not well developed. We feared that such a format would be repetitive and might be of little value to clinicians. Eliot Werner at Plenum suggested a simple solution to the book's direction. He recommended that we write the majority of the book, and that we include speciftc invited chapters from prominent procrastination researchers. In this manner we could combine the focus of an authored book with the diversity of an edited volume. The present text became an Hauthored with contributors" book. Chapters that do not include author names have been written by us. Chapters by our associates are clearly marked. The associate authors do not always agree with each other or, for that matter, with us. However, we are pleased with the diversity of theoretical sentiment expressed in this book. Respectful disagreement is a hallmark of a progressive science, providing that those who disagree maintain positive dialogue. Fortunately, the community of researchers in



xiii



xiv



PREFACE



the field of procrastination is small and cooperative enough that this dialogue has been quite open, if occasionally spirited. One criticism often voiced of both authored and edited books is that they usually escape the peer-review process. This book is an exception. All chapters were peer reviewed by outside reviewers. We greatly appreciate the contributions of these all-but-anonymous scholars and have almost always incorporated their criticisms into helpful revisions. In addition to Eliot Werner and C. R. Snyde~ we wish to thank a number of colleagues and friends who offered us encouragement and helpful critiques, including-but not limited to-our reviewers: Marvin Acklin, Robert Arkin, Sean Austin, Tamara Baker, Roy Baumeiste~ Sam Bogoch, Hilman Boudreaux, Roberta Bowie, Margaret Brugge, Michael Blitz, Meghan Byrne, Linda Chamberlain, Jonathan Cheek, Tom Ciprillina, Shel Cot1e~ Rebecca Curtis, Jorge Daruna, Harold Dawley, Phil DeSimone, Oeo Dillon, John Dovidio, Larry Emmett, Robert Emmons, Eva Feindler, Kay Fisch, Aileen Fink, Hans Eysenck, Judy Holmes, J. 1. Lewis, Luciano L'Abate, John Lombardo, Nita Lutwak, George Nagle, 'fram Neill, Julie Norem, Mike Olivette, Nunzio Pomara, Tom Petzel, Walter Reichman, Steve Scher, Alan Sconzert, Myrna Shure, Dan Skubick, Crist Stevenson, Kate Szymanski, Gary Thomsen, and Dolly Weiss. Ferrari personally thanks Leonard Jason, Herbert Muriels, Diane Tice, Ray Wolfe, and the members of the 1993 Nags Head Invitational Conference on "Personality and Social Behavior. Johnson and McCown also would like to add thanks to Hugh Gannon, Jenny Ornsteen, Margaret Brugge, and Mary Ellen Johnson. We also would like to thank our students (JRF-Tracey Clark, Barbara Effert, Bobbi Jo Nelson, Denise Roberts, and Gail Zelinski; JLJ-Michael Bloom; WGM-Katherine Bishop, Deni Carise, and Jennifer Posa), families, and certainly our research participants. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Daniel SchoppWyatt for creating the subject index and to rrudy Brown of Plenum for assistance and support. /I



JOSEPH



R.



FERRARI



1. JOHNSON WILliAM G. MCCOWN JUDITH



CONTENTS



Chapter 1



An Overview of Procrastination ................................ .



1



Procrastination Research: A Growing Endeavor ................ . Definitions of Procrastination ................................ . Historical Roots .......................................... . Contemporary Definitions ................................ . Oinical Significance of Procrastination ....................... . Procrastination in the General Population ..................... . Procrastination in Adult Clinical Populations ................ . Relation of Axis II Disorders to Procrastination .............. . Conclusion



2 3 3 5 12 15



17 18



19



Chapter 2



Procrastination Research: A Synopsis of Existing Research Perspectives



21



Preempirical Inquiry ........................................ Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Theories .................. Psychoanalytic Theories ................................... Psychodynamic Theories .................................. Procrastination Research and the Behavioral rradition . . . . . . . . . . . Reinforcement Theory ..................................... Procrastination and Specious Rewards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Behaviorism and Programmed Systems of Instruction ........ Critique of Behaviorism as Explanation of Procrastination



21 22 22 23 25 26 31 32 34



xv



xvi



CONTENlS



Cognitive and Cognitive-Behavioral Theories of Procrastination .. Irrational Beliefs .......................................... Self-Statements and Private Self-Consciousness ............... Locus of Control and Learned Helplessness .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Irrational Perfectionism .................................... Depression, Low Self-Esteem, and Anxiety ..............•..... Temperamental and Personological Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Achievement Motivation and Procrastination ................. Intelligence and Ability .................................... Impulsivity and Extraversion ............................... Conscientiousness ......................................... Differences in Capacity for Accurate Time Perception ......... Neuropsychological and Biological Variables ................... Conclusion .................................................



34 35 36 37 38 38 40 40 40 42 43 44 45 46



Chapter 3



Assessment of Academic and Everyday Procrastination: The Use of SelfReport Measures .........................................



47



Academic Procrastination .................................... Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students (PASS) ............ The Aitken Procrastination Inventory (API) .................. Tuckman Procrastination Scale (TPS) ........................ Conclusions on Academic Measures ........................ Measures of Everyday Procrastination ......................... General Procrastination Scale (GP) .......................... Decisional Procrastination (DP) Scale........................ Adult Inventory of Procrastination (AlP) ................. . . . . The Tel-Aviv Procrastination (TAP) Inventory................. Conclusion on Measures of Everyday Procrastination .........



48 48 52 54 55 56 56 61 63 66 69



Chapter 4



Academic Procrastination: Theoretical Notions, Measurement, and Research ................................................



71



Henri C. Schouwenburg Manifestations of Procrastinatory Behavior ..................... Procrastination and Irrational Thought ......................



72 72



CONTENTS



Fear of Failure and Procrastination .......................... Procrastination and HThe Big Five" .......................... Procrastination and Self-Worth ............................. Integration into a Working Hypothesis ...................... 'freatment of Academic Procrastination ........................ Measurement: The Development of New Instruments .... . . . . . . . The Procrastination Checklist Study Tasks (PCS) ............. The Academic Procrastination State Inventory (APSI) ......... The Study Problems Questionnaire (SPQ) ................... Research ................................................... Time Dependency of Academic Procrastination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prediction of Study Progress ............................... Conclusion .................................................



xvii



73 76 80 81 83 84 84 85 87 90 90 93 95



Chapter 5



Trait Procrastination, Agitation, Dejection, and Self-Discrepancy. . . . . .



97



Clarry H. LAy The Quasi-Independent Nature of Agitation (Anxiety) and Dejection (Depression) .................................. Assessing the Relations of Thait Procrastination with Agitation and Dejection-Related Emotions (Studies 1-4) ............. Study 1 .................................................. Study 2 .................................................. Study 3 .................................................. Study 4 .................................................. General Conclusions Based on Studies 1-4 .................... Cross-Cultural Considerations ................................ A Consideration of Some Other Theoretical Statements ......... Thait Procrastination, Affect, and Dilatory Behavior ............. Implications for the Counseling of Thait Procrastinators . . . . . . . . . .



99 100 100 102 103 105 106 107 109 110 112



Chapter 6



Dimensions of Perfectionism and Procrastination ...................



113



Gordon L. Flett, Paul L. Hewitt, and Tlwmas R. Martin The Family Environment and its Link to Perfectionism and Procrastination ..........................................



114



xviii



CONTENTS



History of the Perfectionism Construct ........................ Similarities between Perfectionism and Procrastination .......... Distinguishing Features............................. ....... Procrastination and Perfectionistic Parental Expectancies ........ Perfectionism and Procrastination in Low-Threat Situations ...... Future ~earCh Issues ...................................... Summary ..................................................



116 117 118 126 130 132 136



Chapter 7 Procrastination, Negative Self-Evaluation, and Stress in Depression and Anxiety: A Review and Preliminary Model ...................



137



Gordon L. Flett, Kirk R. Blankstein, and Thomas R. Martin



Procrastination in Anxiety and Depression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Negative Self-Concepts of Procrastinators............ ...... Procrastination, Life Stress, and Adjustment ................... Toward a Model of Procrastination and Poor PsyChological Adjustment ............................................ Procrastination and the Development of Self-Uncertainty ...... Procrastination, Social Comparison, and the Self ............. Procrastination and the Avoidance of Diagnostic Information .. Optimistic versus Pessimistic Procrastination in Personal Adjustment ............................................ Coping with Procrastination and PsyChological Distress ....... Summary and Future ~earCh Directions .....................



138 143 148 156 158 160 161 163 164 166



Chapter 8 The Role of Personality Disorders and Characterological Tendencies in Procrastination ...........................................



169



The Role of Anxiety and Fear -................................ Procrastination and Personality Disorders...................... Procrastination and Passive-Aggressiveness .................... Procrastination and Obsessive-Compulsive Tendencies ....•..... Study 1 .................................................. Study 2 .................................................. Study 3 .................................................. General Conclusion .........................................



170 171 171 173 173 178 183 185



CONTENTS



xix



Chapter 9 Treatment of Academic Procrastination in College Students



187



Meta-Analysis and the Ethics of Intervention .................. How Theoretical Accounts of Procrastination Influence rreatment Strategies .............................................. The rreatment of College-Student Procrastination: An Overview Referral Typologies ........................................ Assessment and Obtaining a History of the College-Student Procrastinator ........................................... General rreatment Philosophy Regarding College-Student Procrastination .......................................... Changing Cognitive Misconceptions: A Key Treatment Strategy for all Types of Procrastination ........................... Modifying Cognitive Distortions and the Anxious Procrastinator Cognitive Interventions for the Low-Conscientious Procrastinator Group Therapy for Academic Procrastinators: The 10-Session Structured Model ....................................... Individual Therapy for Procrastination ........................ A Two-Session Intervention ..................................



187 189 190 191 194 196 197 199 201 204 208 209



Chapter 10 Treating Adult and Atypical Procrastination .......................



211



Relevant Theoretical Orientation .............................. "Typical" and '~typical" Adult Procrastination: The Critical Distinction ............................................. Group Treatment ............................................ The Length of rreatment for "Typical" Adult Procrastination ..... Case Study: A Treatment Plan for Typical Adult Procrastination Integrating the rreatment of Typical Procrastination into General Psychotherapy .......................................... Psychopharmacology and Procrastination? ..................... Assessment: The Need for a Full History ...................... Stress and Procrastination: An Often Overlooked Link .......... '~ddiction" to Procrastination and Concurrent Substance Abuse Atypical Procrastination ..................................... Psychodynamic rreatment for Atypical Procrastination ........ Family rreatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion .................................................



212 212 215 216 217 218 219 221 224 225 226 228 232 233



xx



CONTENTS



Chapter 11



Epilogue as Prologue



235



Considerations for Future Research .......................... . Specific Areas of Future Interest ............................. . Neuroscience and Biopsychology .......................... . Developmental and Educational Research ................... . Industrial/Organizational Psychology ...................... . Personality Psychology ................................... . Social Psychology ........................................ . Clinical/Counseling Psychology ........................... . Experimental Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology: The Need for a Return to Basic Research ................. . Conclusion



235 236 236 237 239 240



241 242 243



245



References .................................................. .



247



Index ...................................................... .



265



CHAPTER



1



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION Sloth is equal in nefariousness to greed, lust, theft, and murder . . . HENRY WYKLIFFE,



1142



Procrastination is not merely a curious human aberration, one of the many instances in which people failed to pursue their interest in an efficient and productive manner. It represents a dysfunction of human abilities that are important, if not essential, for coping with the myriad tasks, major or minor, that accumulate daily on our desks, in our memo books, or in our minds .... When we procrastinate we waste time, miss opportunities, and do not live authentic lives ... NORMAN MILGRAM,



1991



Chronic procrastination and task-avoidant behavior are extraordinarily common problems. As we will suggest later in this chapter and throughout this book, procrastination is often related to a variety of psychiatric syndromes. Moreover, as it will be hypothesized in Chapter 7, procrastinatory behavior may constitute a causal stress that contributes to psychological dysfunctions and maladaptive behavior patterns. Given the potential role of procrastination as both a contributor and outcome of psychiatric conditions, it is surprising that so little serious scientific attention has been directed toward this behavior. With the exception of several publications in the educational psychology literature, many over two decades old, the present volume is the first primarily scientific book on this topic. Admittedly, one reason that procrastination generally has not been the focus of serious theoretical and empirical inquiry is because it seems, to some observers at least, too flippant a topic to be granted much scientific credence. Everyone procrastinates, at least occasionally. Additionally, pro1



2



CHAPTER!



crastination is often viewed as humorous, and it is rare that a scholarly discussion on the topic does not include an audience member's reference to an amusing anecdote involving task avoidance. The behavior of intentional inactivity is so common that it hardly seems problematic or worthy of significant scrutiny by the dignified behavioral researcher. Finally, chronic procrastination is usually viewed by punctual and efficient persons as an annoying and illogical action (Burka & Yuen, 1983; Ellis & Knaus, 1977; Knaus, 1973). Since most people who perform behavioralscience research are probably highly conscientious and punctual individuals, it is often difficult for the majority of such researchers to show interest in or empathy for the plight of people who are constantly unable to meet deadlines. Chronic procrastinators are often labeled as lazy, indolent, and unambitious, words that are pejorative in an achlevement-oriented society (Knaus, 1973). People whose behavior is well within traditional moral boundaries, save for their lack of punctuality, are frequently stigmatized by procrastination (Burka & Yuen, 1983). For example, individuals who fail to file their income taxes on time are often punished with criminal sanctions and their reputations may be seriously affected. Even minor task avoidance, such as not purchasing an anniversary present in a timely manner, may frequently be interpreted as showing negative intentions, lack of consideration, or poor motivation.



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH: A GROWING ENDEAVOR Many of these factors have coalesced to discourage would-be researchers from regarding procrastination as a topic for significant empirical inquiry. Graduate students, the lifeblood of behavioral-science research, may be particularly dissuaded. However, in recent years many psychologists and other behavioral scientists have begun to recognize the importance of scientific investigation into the causes and correlates of procrastination. Part of this change may have been sparked by interest generated in the popular press, where articles regarding procrastination are not uncommon and writers search out scientists who can address problems that are frequent among their readers or, in the case of electronic media, their listeners. The clinical experiences of practicing psychologists may have also served to sensitize clinician/researchers to the topic. Other empirically oriented researchers became interested in the topic from observation within varying settings. Regardless of where or how the impetus arose, however, behavioral scientists are finally beginning to formulate a sentiment that clinicians have held for years: Procrastination is a complex, often chronic, behavioral pattern that sometimes defies



3



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



straightforward causal explanation. For the clinician and client, procrastination constitutes a frustrating and ultimately self-defeating pattern that is often intractable, unless professional intervention is provided. Thus, greater knowledge regarding theoretically based treatments with demonstrated efficacy are needed. Unfortunately, we are a long way from this goal, perhaps because of the complexity of this behavior. Accordingly, professionals who scan this book with the hope of finding a clinician's practical manual for the treatment of procrastination may be disappointed. Although in Chapters 9 and 10 we discuss the clinical therapy of procrastination, much of the material from these chapters is anecdotal or based upon outcome data collected on small samples. Much work remains to be done before a treatment techtwlogy for procrastination can be developed. The principal reason for this concerns the lack of an adequate knowledge base. This can be seen in the paucity of procrastination articles relative to other topics in the clinical- or behavioral-science literature. For example, in 1993 there were approximately one-thousand times as many research articles on depression as there were on procrastination, and 960 times more about schizophrenia. As the size of this volume attests, we don't know nearly as much as we would like regarding etiology, prevention, or treatment of procrastination. Controlled clinical studies of therapeutic outcome are woefully lacking. There is almost no literature comparing treatment methods in diverse populations, especially groups of nonstudents. Consequently, although this book will prove valuable to the clinician who works with procrastinators, we hope its greatest value will be in highlighting areas of inquiry where additional work is needed and where findings could be fruitfully integrated into clinical practice. Our sincere hope is that the field of procrastination research progresses so rapidly that this volume becomes quickly obsolete. For this to occur, there must be an increase in research. An additional reason that clinical interest has surpassed research efforts may be that is difficult to agree upon a satisfactory definition of procrastination. In this chapter we review the problems associated with various definitions and furnish what we believe to be useful suggestions. Following this we briefly discuss the clinical significance of procrastination, arguing that it is an appropriate area of concern for psychologists and other behavioral scientists.



DEFINITIONS OF PROCRASTINATION HISTORICAL



Roars



Milgram (1992) emphasized that procrastination is essentially a modern malady, noting that its occurrence is only relevant in countries where technology is advanced and schedule adherence is important. There is



4



CHAPTER!



substantial truth to this assertion. The more industrialized a society, the more salient the construct of procrastination becomes. DeSimone (1993) noted that many preindustrialized societies do not have words comparable to our notion of procrastination. The ancient Egyptians, for example, possessed two verbs that have been translated as meaning procrastinate. One denoted the useful habit of avoiding unnecessary work and impulsive effort, while the other denoted the harmful habits of laziness in completing a task necessary for subsistence, such as tilling the fields at the appropriate time of year in the Nile flood cycle. While we agree with Milgram that procrastination may be much more conspicuous in industrial societies, we must qualify the assertion that procrastination is purely a modem phenomena. Similar words or constructs have existed throughout history, although with different, and usually less negative, connotations. The term procrastination comes directly from the Latin verb procrastinare, meaning quite literally, to put off or postpone until another day (DeSimone, 1993). This itself is a compilation of two words-pro, a common adverb implying forward motion, and crastinus, meaning Nbelonging to tomorrow." The combined word is used numerous times in Latin texts, not surprisingly, given the military emphasis of Roman culture. Roman use of this term seemed to reflect the notion that deferred judgment may be necessary and wise, such as when it is best to wait the enemy out and demonstrate patience in military conflict. Perhaps to the ancients, procrastination involved a sophisticated decision regarding when not to act, an opposite tendency from impulsiveness and acting without adequate forethought. The Oxford English Dictionary (OEQ 1952) lists the earliest known English usage of the word procrastination as occurring in 1548 in Edward Hall's Chronicle: The Union of Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancestre and Yorke. The OED notes that the term is used several times in this work and apparently without pejorative connotation, reflecting more of the concept of Ninformed delay" or Nwisely chosen restraint" popular in Roman accounts. According to the OEQ the word procrastination was in relatively common usage by the early 16oos. The negative connotations of the term did not seem to emerge until the mid-18th century, at approximately the time of the Industrial Revolution. How procrastination came to acquire its negative moral connotations is speculative. It is well known that in agrarian societies substantial contempt is reserved for persons demonstrating sloth-a term connoting physical inactivity that etymologically and philosophically was initially separate from the concept of procrastination. According to the OED definition, sloth was an Old English term widely used in the late Middle Ages. Sloth implies not only personal avoidance, but also active manipulation to get another to do the work necessary for one's own subsistence. This term



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



5



was much more relevant to the lives of persons who lived in an agriculturally based social milieu. In today's industrial society the term has mostly vanished from contemporary use, although perhaps the concept of getting over, expressed by working persons when they shirk responsibilities onto other people, is a close approximation. Regardless, Milgram (1992) is undoubtedly correct when he asserts that the importance attached to punctuality is greater in industrialized countries. The distinction between sagacious delay and immoral laziness has seemed to blur in contemporary Western language and social thought where economic emphasis is on more immediate activity. An interesting study for the industrial psychologist working in conjunction with a linguist and an economist would be to correlate linguistic changes in the concepts of task delay with indices of economic growth. We would predict that as economies become larger and more complex, the concept of sloth becomes less important and words related to the concept of task avoidance become more negatively imbued with meaning. CONTEMPORARY DEFINITIONS



A major difficulty in studying, understanding, and treating procrastination may involve variations in its subjective definitions. Unlike depression or anxiety, where meaning is more intuitive and likely to result in substantial agreement, one person's feelings of putting off a task might be someone else's version of punctuality (Silver, 1974). This is easily seen in family or couples therapy when people fight over differing basic expectations regarding when family responsibilities should be executed. It is very common, for example, to have one partner accuse the other of being a procrastinator, while the second partner states that he or she is "normal" and that the other partner is "rigid," "obsessed," or other adjectives. Therefore, it would be useful to both researchers and clinicians to attempt an adequate definition that is both inclusive and likely to be widely accepted. However, this task may prove more difficult than it initially seems. There are a variety of present-day definitions, each with different denotations. Because of this we have asked each of the guest authors in subsequent chapters to specify how they have defmed procrastination. It may also be useful to keep in mind some strengths and limitations of different classes of definitions that are common to different laboratories and investigators. Definitions with Temporal Emphasis Silver (1974) has emphasized the temporal component as the central defining concept of procrastination. He believes that the sine qua non of



6



CHAPTER!



this behavior is that the procrastinator forfeits the likelihood that a task will be completed successfully and optimally. Procrastination, he argues, is not simply the act of task avoidance, which may under certain circumstances be a highly logical decision. Silver argues that individuals who procrastinate do not intend to ignore or elude the task they are delaying. Instead, they simply put the task off past the optimal time it should be initiated to guarantee the maximal likelihood of its successful completion. Attempting to determine the most appropriate time for a specific action occurring under uncertain conditions (e.g., selling a particular stock) has fostered a sophisticated branch of applied-decision theory (Swets, 1991). There is substantial evidence that humans do not perform these types of activities well and, instead of examining options in an optimal fashion, rely on simplified internal rules or heuristics to guide their behaviors (Kahnemann, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982). It is also clear that people can vastly improve this skill through simple problem-solving training that emphasizes construction of a costlbenefits analysis regarding the outcomes of their behavioral choices (Baron & Brown, 1991). Perhaps a problem with Silver's definition is that it ignores the importance of the specific task and probable payoffs associated with task completion. In real life, some things get done first because the remote possibility associated with their incompletion may be quite disastrous. Other events are postponed because there is little likelihood that less-thanprompt attention will have a significant impact. An example of this is demonstrated by hospital emergency rooms in the form of emergency triage. An individual with severe chest pains and a family history of heart disease gets immediate attention; there is no procrastination by the hospital staff whatsoever. The odds that the patient's condition will tum out to be rather benign are actually quite high. However, the consequences of the unlikely outcome are quite serious. On the other hand, the patient with a toothache gets a low priority because the chances that he or she will need immediate care are extremely low, based on prior probabilities. Staff might make such a patient wait through their break periods before seeing the unfortunate tooth sufferer. They "procrastinate" caring for him or her because the condition is of apparently low priority. Occasionally there are terrible exceptions to the retrospective wisdom in such a course of action, for example when a "toothache pain" is actually a symptom of an intracranial hemorrhage. However, the usually less serious needs of this patient will be balanced against the necessity of completing other tasks first. The statistical theory of expected values has found a nice application in a relatively new field known as risk management, which assesses the costs of a possible outcome as well as the likelihood of its occurrence (froyer & Salman, 1986).



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



7



Irrationality Another set of definitions has emphasized the irrational aspects of procrastination. As we will show in Chapter 2, the paradoxical notion of procrastination as irrational behavior was almost a natural attraction to cognitively oriented psychotherapists. For example, Ellis and Knaus (1977), in a layperson's self-help book, provide one of the first quasiempirically oriented treatments of procrastination. They liken the behavior to neurosis and believe its illogicalness is its salient feature. Ellis and Knaus find it very curious, therefore, that few psychologists have attempted an empirically based treatment of such an obviously dysfunctional behavior. 1 In lamenting the amount of empirical research conducted on this topic they state: Does no one care? Will no one lift a finger to help rid the world of this destructive aspect of slothfulness? Fortunately, we do and will. For we don't like procrastination. It adds little to and it subtracts a lot from joyous autonomous living. We don't see it as the worst emotional plague imaginable, but we view it as a dangerous disadvantage. Part of the human condition-yes-but a nasty, unattractive part. And one that merits extirpation. (pp. 1-2)



A similar sentiment regarding irrationality as the major feature of procrastination was expressed by Silver and Sabini (1981). These authors argued that by definition all procrastination is self-defeating. Unlike behavior directed at the mere avoidance of a task, procrastination is inherently goal-undermining. Burka and Yuen (1983), in their popular and useful self-help book, also reiterate the irrational nature of procrastination. Other researchers have challenged the universality of the irrationality of procrastination. Ferrari (1993b, 1994) argued that, although procrastination may often be self-defeating, this behavior may also be in one's own self-interest and therefore quite logical. Ferrari (1993a,b, 1994; Ferrari & Emmons, 1994, in press) has further drawn an intuitive distinction between functional and dysfunctional procrastination. For example, it may make sense to avoid paying United States income taxes for as long as possible prior to the due date of April 15. Or, it may make sense to postpone a task past an optimal starting time for completion when the task may be reassigned to a coworker if it is not already started. Such behavior becomes dysfunctional only when there are penalties imposed on the procrastinator. 1A



dissertation by McKean (1990) notes, however, that despite the fact that Ellis and Knaus loudly lament the lack of empirical research regarding procrastination, they then proceed to fiJI the next 100 pages of their popular psychology book with c1inical conjectures and speculations. No empirically derived data is presented, only anecdotal accounts from the authors' private-practice experiences.



8



CHAPI'ERI



The Moral Dimension in Definitions The Webster New Collegiate Dictionary (1992) makes a typical attempt to define procrastination. According to this source, the verb procrastinate means "to put off intentionally and usually reprehensibly the doing of something that should be done [italics ours]." According to this definition, procrastination denotes undesirable behavior and a choice or sequencing of activities that also implies a moral dimension. Questions concerning the utility or functionality of procrastination are therefore oxymoronic. With this definition, procrastination represents behavior that is inauspicious and self-defeating by its very nature. McKean (1990) notes the implicit moral tone of Ellis and Knaus's work and is critical of much of a similar attitude found in popular and semipopular writings regarding procrastination. The perspective of other selfhelp works is equally negative. Bliss (1983), in an otherwise client-friendly and uSeful book, equates procrastination with laziness and indifference, certainly negative attributes in Western culture. Other popular accounts by Lakein (1973) and Sherman (1981) are only slightly more tolerant of the behaviors of procrastinators, often emphasizing the self-defeating aspects of these people. A problem with insisting on a definition that emphasizes the selfdefeating aspects of procrastinating behavior is that it often tends to assume that the moral dimension is the principal area of interest for inquiry. DeSimone (1993) has discussed the manner in which frameworks of scientific inquiry regarding specific psychological constructs are shaped by the cultural templates through which they were filtered. A well-known example concerns the concept of knowledge (knosis), emphasized in Christian scripture. According to DeSimone, because of the religious and spiritual implications in antiquity, the idea of searching for knowledge has attained spiritual overtones, even for secular knowledge. DeSimone (1993) discusses how the present concept of procrastination has been shaped by the cultural context of Greco-Roman civilization. Specifically, the Latin (literally, "forward motion tomorrow") is connotatively shaped by Greek notions of progress and its antithesis, namely a "missing of the mark." This latter concept in Greek has frequently been translated variously into Western literature. Its most noticeable influence has been through the New Testament, where it is translated as the word sin. In other words, procrastination has become somewhat inadvertently linked with the English word for sin and this coupling was very influential to Medieval and Reformation philosophers and theologians. It is not surprising, then, that it is very difficult to free this term from a Greco-



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



9



Roman heritage, binding it to the concept of some type of morally reprehensible behavior. From our perspective we believe that it is of little use to link procrastination with personal morality. Depression, anxiety, and even schizophrenia were once believed to have a major moral component. It was only when this dimension was deemphasized that scientific progress regarding treatment was possible. Presently, similar controversies are evident in the field of substance abuse Oohnson & McCown, 1992), where data seem to suggest that a de-moralization of the behavior in question results in more effective treatment, as well as increased scientific knowledge. N



N



Operational Definitions Perhaps to avoid the moral dimensions, some researchers involved in procrastination prefer to avoid a formal definition of the behavior and instead emphasize operational definitions. Kantor's (1969) classic text regarding the progression of psychology argued that operational definitions are often necessary in the early stages of any scientific construct's history. It is only when the construct becomes better understood that operationalism is no longer necessary. Operational definitions may involve either behavioral indices or may derive from psychometric classifications. As an example of behavioral indices, in a typical research project regarding procrastination, college students who do not turn in a percentage of assignments or who show up late to class a specific number of times are operationally defined as procrastinators. Changes in lateness regarding specific and necessary but often avoided tasks can also be used as an indication of consumer or client satisfaction (Spoth & Molgaard, 1993). Specific-task items leading to lateness can be analyzed with techniques such as conjoint analysis (Green & Wmd, 1975), which allows an estimation of the relative importance or utility an individual attaches to each possible feature of a product, service, or process when these features are considered jointly, rather than one at a time (R. Johnson, 1987). In conjoint analysis, specific attributes associated with consumer preference can usually be isolated, suggesting a role for this and similar techniques in program evaluation as well as business (Spoth, 1989). Behaviorally anchored operational definitions lend themselves quite well to applied community research (Stecher & Davis, 1987), since criteria measures-such as percentages of people who file income taxes late or who put off annual medical checkups-are comparatively easy and inexpensive to obtain and replicate. Behaviorally anchored operational definitions of specific undesirable



10



CHAPTERl



behaviors are usually easily obtainable and may be amenable to conjoint analysis. For example, one of the authors was asked to perform a program evaluation to determine why municipality residents failed to perform the legally required behavior of paying borough taxes by a specific date. The accountants who had designed the recent municipality surtax were confused, since they had identically followed a very successful process of revenue collection implemented by a nearby municipality. However, in practice, a large minority of citizens forgot or deliberately ignored these new taxes. (In other words, they procrastinated.) A conjoint analysis conducted among persons who failed to pay their taxes determined that the largest "undesirability" of the new tax program was the quarterly payments that were required to be fIled by law. Average wage earners had diffIculty keeping up with the requirement for quarterly fIlings and were more comfortable with an additional withholding tax. A comparison with the municipality where the quarterly payment had been successful indicated that this town had a higher number of small-business people and self-employed professionals who were accustomed to the pattern of quarterly fIling. Although a quarterly payment may have been slightly more economically rational, since it allowed the earner to keep her or his money for a longer period of time, no actual desirability was perceived for this advantage. Interestingly, the accounting fIrm hired to construct the tax levy could not believe that such a small inconvenience as quarterly filing could account for the substantial delay in paying taxes. However, once the law was changed to allow people the option of withholding or quarterly payments, late payments and noncompliance fell substantially. More common than behavioral criteria in psychological research is the use of questionnaires to operationally defIne persons as procrastinators (e.g., Chapter 2; Aitken, 1982; McCown, Petzel, & Rupert, 1987). For example, students who score in the extreme portion of an inventory designed to detect procrastination may be operationally defIned as either procrastinators or highly punctual persons, depending upon the direction of the scores. Usually these "cutoff scores" involve quartiles or median splits. An advantage of this procedure is that it produces quasi-experimental groups that can generate the type of data that is amenable to hypothesis testing with the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and its related family of techniques. For example, trends analysis can be easily performed to determine whether linear 01" curvilinear relationships exist between procrastination and various dependent measures. Unfortunately, operational defInitions have potential liability. In the initial period of any scientifIc endeavor, such defInitions provide a convenient manner of circumventing theoretical disputes. They enable the



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



11



researcher to remain flexible about attributes of the construct under investigation. However, they are at best a "stopgap measure." Ultimately, considerable scientific energy is expended on arguing about the nuances generated by operational implications and too often scientific progress is stifled rather than fostered. This is because comparisons of empirical relationships across populations become much more difficult when different operational definitions are commonplace. Researchers too often spend time arguing about the "real nature" of the construct, as if operational definitions possessed a higher degree of reification than they were intended. Multidimensional Definitions A broad and systematic definition of procrastination is offered by Milgram (1991), who has emphasized four components as necessary for procrastination. They note that procrastination is primarily (1) a behavior sequence of postponement; (2) resulting in a substandard behavioral product; (3) involving a task that is perceived by the procrastinator as being important to perform; and (4) resulting in a state of emotional upset. While this definition provides an excellent description of many of the aspects of the syndrome of procrastinating behavior, some may disagree with its universality. Milgram's definition may seem more of an ideal typology, in the sense used by Max Weber (1926) to describe core aspects of a behavior. Procrastination does not always result in inefficiency or substandard behaviors. As we will see in later chapters, procrastination is often a deliberate self-motivating strategy for persons who are in need of intense levels of stimulation in order to be adequately motivated. In fact, some persons can work efficiently only after procrastinating. Some persons work extremely well under the pressure of self-manipulated deadlines and perform quite well. Other people are not particularly distressed regarding their behavioral or purported behavioral decrements following procrastination. Procrastination may sometimes be viewed as a method of self-handicapping and may be used as an excuse to avoid ego-dystonic cognitions (Ferrari, 1991b, 1992c). As Snyder and Higgins (1988) have noted, people engage in a variety of excuses to negotiate a more pleasant outcome for their behaviors. Procrastination is often an excellent excuse for poor performance. Clinical interviews with procrastinators often find that they are emotionally unfazed regarding their inefficiencies or delays, and in fact may be quite pleased with poor performance that was accomplished by merely a frantic last-minute effort. Another attempt at a multifocused definition has been proposed by



12



0IAPI'ER1



McCown and Roberts (1994). Based on Ferrari's (1993b) distinctions discussed earlier, these authors argue that dysfunctional procrastination can actually be defined as the time past the optimal beginning point for completion



of an important task that has a high probability of needing completion and that does not have unreasonable demands of personal costs associated with attempted completion. Rational or functional procrastination, on the other hand, is defined as similar behavior evoked for actions that have a low probability of needing completion or have excessively high costs associated with personal completion at their optimal time. The authors have attempted to standardize these



definitions through mathematical formulae, although the utility of these efforts over simple verbal descriptions has not been demonstrated. Regardless, researchers have used varying definitions of procrastination, which might have broader implications for provoking future disagreement. We, therefore, have asked contributors to this volume to explicitly state the definitions of procrastination that they are using.



CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PROCRASTINATION Until now we have asserted that procrastination is of sufficient £re-quency and clinical interest to justify systematic research efforts. However, this is true only if (a) its occurrence is relatively widespread, and (b) pr0crastination results in at least some degree of unhappiness, symptomatology, or psychological dysfunction. Regarding prevalence, it is useful to, separate procrastination that occurs in academic matters from that in other spheres. Not surprisingly, because of their convenience in sampling by academics, but also because of the purported significance of procrastination in this group, college students have been first and most widely studied. Hill, Hill, Chabot, and Barrall (1976) conducted one of the earliest surveys attempting to determine rates of procrastination in college students. Five hundred students at five different campuses were asked to rate their own procrastination on academic tasks. Ratings were made on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The type of school students attended failed to correlate with the amount of procrastination they reported. The authors also failed to find differences in self-rated procrastination between students at different campuses, which r~ged from a community college to an Ivy League school. Furthermore, these authors also failed to find differences in procrastination among college majors. Regardless of campus or major, approximately 10%of students rated themselves as lIusual procrastinators." Another 17% labeled themselves as "frequent" procrastinators, and another 23% stated that they procrastinated"about half of the time:' In other words, approximately 50%



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



13



of the students sampled listed themselves as procrastinating about half of the time or more on academic tasks. Interestingly, these authors found a significant trend toward increased procrastination throughout the undergraduate careers of students. More than 66% of all freshmen reported themselves as seldom or rarely procrastinating. Only 43% of seniors claimed to procrastinate infrequently. This freshmen-to-senior change represents an increase of approximately 50% in procrastination over the course of 3 years, a statistically highly significant linear trend the authors regard with some dismay. Briordy (1980) constructed one of the first psychometrically oriented questionnaires to measure academic procrastination in college students. This measure was a simple self-report, constructed without a substantial attempt to validate it against external criteria. However, despite criterion validity issues, the instrument appears useful and certainly generated some provocative findings. Briordy, for instance, found that 20% of students reported themselves as "problem procrastinators," indicating that their tendency to put things off interfered with both their grades and their enjoyment of life. Future research would substantiate Briordy's 20% figure by indicating that procrastination is a substantial, self-perceived problem for between 20-30% of college students. Aitken (1982) constructed a more extensive and perhaps a more carefully validated questionnaire designed to measure college-student procrastination. She validated the questionnaire against specific behavioral indices hypothesized to occur more often in chronic procrastinators. These included delays in beginning to study for an exam, the number of incomplete grades received during the school year, and the frequency of incurring overdue books at the library. Her study included approximately 120 undergraduates at two state universities. Despite the fact that Aitken apparently never published her inventory in peer-reviewed chapters or as a journal article, it remains a popular instrument for procrastination research. Aitken found that the scores on her procrastination inventory were approximately normally distributed. Very little item analysis was necessary to generate a normal distribution of procrastination scores, suggesting that procrastination represents a genuine normally distributed trait. Students who scored approximately 1.0 standard deviation or more above the mean reported experiencing significant discomfort associated with the persistent tendency to put school assignments off until the last minute. Aitken concluded that procrastination is a problem for up to 25% of college students, a number that she believes concurs with that obtained by Briordy (1980).



Solomon and Rothblum (1984) examined procrastination in 342 college students. One-half of the students admitted that procrastination was a



14



CHAPTER!



moderate or more severe problem for them. Approximately one-fourth of the students believed that their tendency to procrastinate significantly interfered with their grade point averages and the quality of their lives. Students who procrastinated believed that their continued inability to meet deadlines resulted in substantially increased stress. McCown (1986), and McCown, Johnson, and Petzel (1989b) used Aitken's measure and found that procrastination scores were normally distributed in several different student populations. McCown (1986) compared 80 individuals who scored high and 80 who scored low on the procrastination inventory to determine whether sododemographic variables that might require additional time demands influenced scores. His hypothesis was that although procrastination scores might be related to the tendency to postpone tasks, they may also relate to time demands imposed by economic factors, such as impediments due to students' lack of fmances, sodal class, ethnidty, and race. For example, working-class individuals who provide the bulk of their academic tuition payment through part- or full-time work would have less free time than middle-class students, and therefore should appear to procrastinate more. As expected, McCown (1986) found that procrastinators spent less time studying. However, the hypothesis that this was due to factors such as longer commutes for students, outside employment obligations, ethnidty, and family obligations was not supported. Persons with more external time commitments, such as child care or other family care, hobbies, employment commitments, and the like actually reported less procrastination and slightly higher grade point averages. One reason for these findings might be that the external demands imposed on students with limited resources punish them more severely for procrastination, thus extinguishing this behavior more frequently than in students with more economic and time assets. Another explanation is that there may be a greater attrition of procrastinating students among those with less means and increased family demands, thus skewing the findings. Regardless, and as in previous studies, procrastination correlated with lower grade point averages and also with higher perceived subjective distress and dissatisfaction with college life. The largest study regarding procrastination frequency was conducted by McCown and Roberts (1994), who examined the frequency of procrastination with the Aitken measure and with behavioral and self-report assessments in 1,543 college students (785 female). Nineteen percent of freshmen, 22% of sophomores, 27% of juniors, and 31% of seniors endorsed three or more Likert-type items indicating that procrastination was a significant source of personal stress. Twenty-three percent of freshmen, 27% of sophomores, 32% of juniors, and 37% of seniors endorsed three or



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



15



more Likert-type items indicating a belief that personal procrastination tendencies tended to hurt their academic achievement. In conclusion, results from several studies indicate that procrastination is a common, self-perceived problem for college students. Chapters 4 through 7 highlight whether academic procrastination is related to emotional discomfort and maladjustment.



PROCRASTINATION IN THE GENERAL POPULATION Only a few studies have examined the prevalence of procrastination in the general nonstudent population. For example, McCown and Johnson (1989a) surveyed 146 subjects in their validation of an instrument to measure procrastination (the Adult Inventory of Procrastination, or AlP, discussed in Chapter 3). They found that over 25% of subjects stated that procrastination was a "significant problem" in their lives (5 or more on a 7-point Likert-type scale) and that these subjects scored substantially higher on an inventory designed to measure adult procrastination. Almost 40% of subjects stated that procrastination had personally caused them financial loss during the past year. Furthermore, the amount of money subjects stated that procrastination had cost them significantly (and very highly) correlated (r = .54) with AlP scores. Ferrari has conducted several studies regarding procrastination with working adults. For instance, in one study that was widely reported in the popular press, shoppers in a mall were asked to complete procrastination scales and a set of attribution measures during the Christmas-holiday season (Ferrari, 1993a). Higher procrastination scores correlated with de'lays in beginning to shop, and high (compared to low) procrastinators were more likely to delay the redemption of a mall gift certificate. Working adults in business settings also participated in a study examining social comparisons and evaluations of procrastinators in the workplace (Ferrari, 1992a). In addition, nontraditional-age college students in an evening/summer college course participated in a study focused on validating the psychometric properties of two procrastination scales (Ferrari, 1992c). Results suggest that procrastination is a self-perceived problem for many adults. McCown and Roberts (1994) performed a telephone survey of 360 persons selected at random, aged 18 through 77. Individuals were administered an oral version of the AlP (McCown & Johnson, 1989c), an inventory designed to measure dysfunctional procrastination (see Chapter 3). Figure 1-1 illustrates the results of this study.



16



CHAPTER 1



55 53



51



w 49 a: 0



~ 47 z



0



z~



~



8a: ~



45 43



41 39 37 35 20



25



30



35



40



45



50



55



60



65



70



AGE N = 360.



. . Females



"""" Males



FIGURE 1-1. Disbibution of procrastination scores across age and gender.



Procrastination scores for men, as measured by the AIp, reach a peak for persons in their middle-to-Iate 20s. Scores decline until approximately age 60, when they rise abruptly. For women, scores decline from a high point in early adulthood and continue to decline until the same period, at which time they show a sharper rise than with men. The increase in scores for persons in their 60s may be related to retirement or to health limitations in this age group. The effects also could be due to cohort factors, such as the experience of specific age groups with the Great Depression or World War ll. In any case, age-related difficulties in procrastination remain an intriguing source for future research.



17



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASI'INATION PROCRASTINATION IN ADULT CUNICAL POPULATIONS



Recently, attention has been focused on procrastination tendencies among clinical populations (see the next section for several sets of projects involving clinical samples evaluated for procrastination frequencies). McCown and Roberts (1994) performed two studies regarding the relationship between procrastination and psychiatric symptomatology. In the first study, 128 intakes to an outpatient-psychiatric clinic completed the AlP. Diagnoses were made by unanimous consensus of a treatment team composed of at least one licensed psychologist and psychiatrist. The patients were composed of eight different clinical groups. The study included outpatients with the following Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-Third EditionRevised (DSM-ID-R) diagnoses: unipolar depression (25), general anxiety disorder (18), substance abuse (25), schizophrenia (21), post-traumatic stress disorder (PI'SD) (12), anorexia/bulimia (15), and simple phobia (14). A group of nonpatients who did not differ significantly from the patient groups on the variables of race, sex, or age was also included in the study. Table 1-1 shows the scores of each clinical group. Tukey's HSD tests with significance level set at .05 indicated that substance abusers differed significantly from the other diagnostic categories, with substance abusers demonstrating higher procrastination scores. Perhaps some of the much-discussed NdenialNof this group could be due to chronic procrastination in a variety of personal areas, as well as their addictive behavior. More surprising was the relationship between PTSD and procrastination, which was significantly higher than the nonpatient mean and than other diagnostic groups. The reasons for this remain unclear and deserve replication in a larger study. Perhaps a foreshortened sense of the future, Relation of Diagnosis to Procrastination Scores from Adult Inventory of Procrastination



TABLE 1-1.



Diagnosis



Score



sd



Alcohol/substance abuse PI'SD Depression Anxiety Nonpatients Eating disorder Phobia Schizophrenia



60.4 53.2 51.9 46.5 44.1 42.2 41.8 40.3



8.8 6.8 6.6 7.5 6.0 6.8 4.5 6.6



18



CHAPTER!



which is common among persons with PTSD (van der KoIk, 1987), contributes to dilatory behavior. What was unexpected in this study was the lack of relationship between phobias, anxiety, and depression and procrastination. These findings, in combination with the elevated procrastination found in persons with PTSQ suggest that it is not neuroticism or anxiety per se that correlates with procrastination, but instead a synergistic combination of traits. Presently, projects are underway in the authors' laboratories to determine the causal relation of procrastination and psychopathology. Despite the fact that causality between various forms of psychopathology and procrastination remains unclea~ an additional role has been suggested for the capacity of procrastination to foster psychological symptom severity in vulnerable individuals. Johnson (1992) hypothesized that trait procrastination should correlate positively with psychological symptom severity for persons experiencing initial psychotherapy sessions. Her reasoning was that procrastinators would probably have delayed seeking treatment for longer intervals than nonprocrastinators and, consequently, their symptoms would have become more severe by the time they sought treatment. Using the Symptom Survey 77, an instrument designed to measure the severity of multiple psychological symptoms, Johnson surveyed 160 psychiatric outpatients at the time of their first clinic appointment. She found significant and positive correlations between the Adult Inventory of Procrastination Scores and symptom severity in the following areas: anxiety (.34), depression (.32), obsessive compulsive tendencies (.26), phobias (.21), and substance abuse (.41). Furthermore, there was a positive correlation (.38) between the log function of days between the time clients first thought about treatment and actually went for help and an aggregate function of symptom severity. Data was aptly summarized by the comments of one client with severe anxiety: "I meant to get help for my nerves, but I just never got around to it until it got real bad ... I guess if I didn't put things off all the time, I might have come in (for treatment) sooner." Notably, Johnson found only a slight reduction of procrastination accompanying symptom improvement. This suggests that procrastination is a stable trait, even in persons with severe psychological symptoms. It also may indicate that procrastination is a risk factor for more severe relapse, since clients who reexperience difficulties may not return to treatment until their lives are substantially disrupted. RELATION OF



AxIs II



DISORDERS TO PROCRASTINATION



Research regarding personality disorders and their correlation with variables associated with normal personality have been hampered by



AN OVERVIEW OF PROCRASTINATION



19



diagnostic difficulty with personality-disorder assessment (Costa & Widiger,1994). The "gold standard" for personality-disorder research remains structured clinical interviews based upon the current psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (such as DSM-IV), which produce binary, categorical data. The use of categorical diagnoses for what are in many cases continuous phenomena has been criticized in many publications and is beyond the scope of this chapter. Until this dispute is resolved, our position is that it is appropriate to investigate the relationship between procrastination and personality disorders, both from categorical and continuousvariable perspectives. Only one study has used categorical diagnoses to ascertain personality disorders and their relation to procrastination. McCown (1994) has used the Structured Clinical Interview of the Diagnosis (SCIDS), along with a supplemental questionnaire, to ascertain personality-disorder diagnoses. This author compared procrastination scores in four groups of subjects: borderlines, antisocials, schizoids, schizotypals, and normal subjects. Results indicate that the borderline- and antisocial-personality disorders had equally high procrastination scores, which were significantly different from persons who were schizoid, schizotypal, or who had no personality disorders. A second study examined the relationship between narcissistic personality and procrastination. Persons with narcissisticpersonality disorders were significantly elevated on the Alp, compared with normal subjects or persons with other personality disorders. McCown et al. (1994) also used a multivariate, continuous data approach to classification of personality disorders, the Personality Disorders Questionnaire, Revised (PDQ-R; Hyler & Reide~ 1993). The correlation of the various PDQ-R scales and AlP scores is illustrated in Table 1-2. These studies provide data suggesting that procrastination is related to a wide variety of AHS II clinical disorders, including histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, and antisocial personality disorders. Procrastination is also negatively related to paranoid and dependent personality disorders as measured by the PDQ-R. The relation between obsessive-compulsive and passive-aggressive personality disorders and procrastination are more complex and will be discussed further in Chapter 8.



CONCLUSION To date, research regarding the .direction of causality in procrastination and negative psychological states has been largely correlational and not longitudinal. This is unfortunate, inasmuch as data do not allow a clear understanding of whether procrastination causes psychological dysfunction or whether such dysfunction causes procrastination. Chapter 7, by



20



CHAPTER 1



Adult Inventory of Procrastination Scores Correlation with Personality Disorders Questionnaire, Revised TABLE 1-2.



PDR Scale Schizoid Schizotypal Paranoid Avoidant Dependant Obsessive-compulsive Passive-aggressive Self-defeating Hisbionic Narcissistic Borderline Antisocial n = 165 outpatient subjects



.05 .11 -.04 .21·



- .2'7" - .11 .41" .10 .26· .32·



.39"· .36"



'p (two-tailed) < .05 "p (two-tailed) < .01



Flett, Blankstein, and Martin, presents a preliminary model suggesting how early parental experiences cause procrastination, which in tum contributes to additional psychological dysfunction. Additional data are needed to test their interesting hypotheses. How~ present data indicates that procrastination is a pervasive phenomenon throughout the adult life span, although a problem that is more pronounced for both the young and the old. Moreover, it appears related to a number of psychiatric syndromes and therefore is a topic warrantirig additional research.



CHAPrER2



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH A SYNOPSIS OF EXISTING RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES



Despite the lack of a singular definition of the key term and, until recently, a relative lack of interest displayed toward this topic by the scientific community, there have been several forays into research regarding procrastination. This chapter reviews empirical research, highlighting areas warranting further inquiry, with emphasis on contrasting the past and potential contributions of various theoretical orientations. Later chapters will focus on specific, novel theories or new data that are presently unavailable.



PREEMPIRICAL INQUIRY Augustine's commentary regarding sloth as one of the seven deadly sins is well known. As we have indicated in Chapter I, Augustine's beliefs were part of the tradition that has significantly shaped the way most people view procrastinators (DeSimone, 1993). Howevex; the notion of sloth implies getting someone else to do one's personal work, tasks that are necessary for personal survival. This concept differs from procrastination because the former involves a shirking of responsibility at someone else's direct expense. Augustine never addressed the morality of putting off until tomorrow behavior that was in one's own objective self-interest to defer. Explanations of a lack of punctuality also occur in the work of many of the prescientific moral philosophers, who attempted to understand



21



22



CHAPTER 2



individual differences. Many of these are reviewed in McCown and DeSimone (1993).



PSYCHOANALYTIC AND PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES



In many areas of psychology, psychoanalytic theories have formed some of the earliest comprehensive explanations of behavior (Brown, 1936). Procrastination is no exception. The concept of avoidance, particularly regarding specific tasks, was discussed by Freud (1953b,c), and later at greater length by a number of his followers (e.g., Alexander, 1933; Rodo, 1933). The role of anxiety in avoidance behavior was best explicated by Freud in the monograph Inhibitians, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1953a). Freud believed that anxiety was a warning signal to the ego of repressed unconscious material that could be disruptive. Once it detects anxiety, the ego institutes a wide variety of defenses. The Freudian notions of dynamic defenses and task avoidance postulates that tasks that are not completed are avoided primarily because they are threatening to the ego. The obvious problem with psychoanalytic theories of procrastination, as with most psychoanalytic formulations, is that they are extraordinarily difficult to test empirically (Kantor, 1953), and as some more vociferous critics have long noted (e.g., Eysenck, 1953), may be scientifically impossible to correct. As is well known, Eysenck and other neobehaviorists have been particularly critical of the ability of psychoanalysis to explain everything and the inability of the paradigm to allow key experiments to test the usefulness of major constructs. However, some of the first experimental research regarding procrastination was conducted by theorists operating from a psychoanalytic perspective and this research deserves discussion, despite its potential ambiguity in interpretation. Using the time period that it takes undergraduate students to fulfill their course requirements as an operational definition, Blatt and Quinlan (1967) studied a group of high and low procrastinators. The two groups were compared on a number of variables. No significant differences were found between groups on any of the following: college grade point averages, vocabulary or information subtest-scale scores of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test (WAIS), areas of academic major, number of extracurricular activities, or total scores from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). However, significant differences were found between groups in a measure relating to the perception of time. The procrastinating students had a lower score on the picture-arrangement subtest of the WAIS, suggesting to Blatt and Quinlan that they had a diminished ability to anticipate future events. Furthermore, when presented with projective testlike story stems, the



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



23



procrastinating students told significantly more "present oriented" narratives than punctual students. While a number of alternative interpretations of this data are pOSSible, (e.g., procrastinators might be more impulsive and situation-bound by present stimuli), Blatt and Quinlan (1967) noted that the story stems of procrastinators produce more themes concerning death. They interpret all of these results from an analytic view, which argues that chronic lateness is related to an unconscious fear of death. They believe procrastination to be an unconscious attempt to stave off mortality by showing a contempt for constraints of the clock and calendar. Psychoanalytic theories regarding procrastination have remained popular, especially among psychiatrists (e.g., Anderson, 1987; Giovacchni, 1975; Jones, 1975; Salizman, 1979; Widseth, 1987). The popularity of this perspective, despite the absence of substantial experimental support, remains perplexing to empirically oriented behavioral science researchers. On the other hand, to those who endorse the psychoanalytic paradigm uncritically, the insistence of confirming empirical data for processes that are most certainly difficult, if not impossible, to measure is scientifically unreasonable. Unfortunately, the gap between psychoanalytically oriented theorists and other members of the behavioral science community may be as wide as ever. PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES



Psychodynamic theorists generally reject the rigid structure of Freudian tenets but usually endorse other aspects of the dynamic model of human behavior championed by Freud and his followers (Levy, 1963). Generally paramount among psychodynamic thinkers is the belief of the primacy of early childhood on future personality development and the belief that emotions from one period may be symbolically expressed through methods other than direct expression. Not surprisingly then, psychodynamic theorists frequently emphasize the symbolic aspects of procrastination as it relates to previous childhood experiences, especially childhood traumas (van der Kolk, 1987). They may also stress the manner in which early childhood experiences shape the cognitive processes of adults. Missildine (1964), a popular writer approaching child development from a psychodynamic perspective, is typical of a number of preempirical authors who attempt an explanation of procrastination. He identified what he terms a chronic procrastination syndrome. He believed that "slow, daydreaming paralysis" regarding task achievement is the final manifestation of this syndrome, and that this syndrome is caused by faulty childrearing practices. Missildine asserted that the procrastinating adult is plagued by



24



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parents who Novercoerced" achievement, setting unrealistic goals for their child, and linking the attainment of these goals to parental love and approval. Such a child raised in this environment becomes anxious and feels worthless when he or she fails to achieve. Later in life, when the adult child is confronted with a task that involves an evaluation of his or her personal worth or abilities, Missildine (1964) believed that he or she tends to reexperience and reenact these early feelings. For example, the adult may begin dawdling and stalling rather than attempting to meet the imposed demands. The result is a tendency to procrastinate that baffles the previously well-functioning adult. MacIntyre (1964), another writer in the psychodynamic tradition, also asserted that faulty childrearing can result in procrastinating adults. MacIntyre believed that either of two parental extremes can cause this problem. The parent who is too permissive is likely to produce a "nervous underachieve~ who simply becomes too anxious to meet future selfimposed deadlines. The parent who is too stem, or authoritarian, is liable to produce an angry underachiever who touts his or her independence from parental figures by habitual disregard for the authority of the clock. Interestingly, these two typologies bear resemblance to those empirically discovered by Lay (1987), McCown, Johnson, and Petzel (1989b), and Ferrari and Olivette (1993, 1994). A popular psychodynamic interpretation of procrastination was presented by Spock (1971) while writing for a popular magazine. Spock postulated that unconscious feelings of parental anger express themselves when children fail at parentally imposed tasks. Children unconsciously respond to this anger by demonstrating a delay of future goal-oriented behavior. When adults raised under these conditions encounter a task requiring a significant degree of achievement, they unconsciously recall the parental conflict. They respond to this unconscious memory and subsequent resentment by attempting to thwart the wishes of the parental figure who is imposing the achievement-oriented task. The result is that they find themselves chronically unable to finish any task that is reminiscent of the early childhood conflicts between themselves and their parents. They become chronic procrastinators, with no insight into their behavior. The psychodynamic tradition remains very popular in self-help books. Burka and Yuen's (1983) useful layperson's guide contains psychologically sound advice and remains popular almost 15 years after it was written. This book highlights common fears of success and failure, as well as anger at authority as major contributors to procrastination. The psychodynamic influence is also evident in popular articles (Gagliardi, 1984). In critically evaluating the utility of the psychodynamic perspective



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



25



we are faced with similar problems as in evaluating psychoanalytic theory. However, while psychodynamic constructs are often difficult to operationalize, researchers have had more success with these than with psychoanalytic theories. For example, evidence for the relation between the general psychodynamic orientation of childhood trauma relating to pr0crastination was furnished by a study from McCown, Carise, and Johnson (1991), who found that adult children of alcoholics were more likely to report higher procrastination scores than other college students. In a presently unpublished study, these authors have extended these findings to adult incest survivors, who were found to score highly on two measures of procrastination and reported a number of difficulties regarding finishing tasks in a timely fashion. Research evidence also supports the role of authoritarian parenting in the development of procrastinators. This is important inasmuch as psychodynamic theorists emphasize the importance of parenting in psychological development. Ferrari and Olivette (1994) asked 84 young women to identify their parents' authority styles. Procrastination scores among these women were significantly related to their father's authoritarian parenting style. Furthermore, these women reported high rates of suppressed anger, and they had mothers who were indecisive. In other words, female procrastinators claimed to be raised by authoritarian fathers and indecisive mothers, and they seemed to use procrastination as a passive-aggressive strategy to cope with this home environment. In psychodynamic terms, it would appear that procrastination may be a way to redirect suppressed anger at a dominating father into a socially acceptable behavior pattern. Psychodynamic thinking has become so commonplace in our culture that psychodynamic explanations appear to be commonplace explanations. However, we presently lack sufficient empirical research to answer the question of the usefulness of the psychodynamic paradigm for procrastination research. Fortunately, serious scientific interest in psychodynamics has reemerged, sparked in part by an expanded methodology furnished by nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory, which challenge traditional notions of linear causality (Blitz, Chamberlain, & McCown, 1995). Our hope is that this research tradition can be expanded to include the topic of procrastination.



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH AND THE BEHAVIORAL TRADmON Scientific attempts to understand procrastination were probably stifled by the behavioral paradigms dominant in North American and, to a



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lesser extent, British psychology from the 1920s to the 196Os. Procrastination usually appears to involve cognitive variables that were of little interest to, or perhaps were even provocative for, behaviorists. Furthermore, the question of why people would put off tasks which they could clearly be punished for failing to complete is somewhat problematic from a behavioral perspective. Not surprisingly, then, behaviorists did little to advance knowledge of procrastination. However, many behavioral constructs are very useful for attempting an explanation of procrastination. Ironically, one major type of behaviorism, advocated by B. E Skinner, generated a fairly substantial body of empirical research relevant to task delays in academic settings. REINFORCEMENT THEORY



The linchpin of behaviorism involves theories regarding the reinforcement of behaviors. A maxim of any of the variety of reinforcement theories is simple: Behavior exists because it has been reinforced (Skinner, 1953). Consequently, according to behavioral theory, students who procrastinate probably have a history of having been successful procrastinators, or at least of finding more reinforcing tasks than studying (Bijou, Morris, & Parsons, 1976). Oassical learning theory has emphasized both punishments and rewards. Therefore, according to learning theory, procrastination should occur most frequently in students who have either been rewarded for such behavior or who have not been punished sufficiently for it. McCown and Ferrari (1995b) tested this hypothesis directly. They asked a group of college-student academic procrastinators and nonprocrastinators, as assessed by Aitken's Procrastination Inventory (API; described in Chapter 3), to recall how many times they had successfully "pulled off' a lastminute deadline. This involved completing a task with little time to spare. Participants also were asked to recall how many times they had failed to perform this last-minute activity successfully. Not surprisingly, and as predicted by reinforcement theory, procrastinators could recall significantly more incidences of successful performance at last-minute deadlines and significantly fewer incidences of being punished by external agencies for not being punctual. Whether these results suggest differences in actual reinforcement history, or simply differences in self-perception or recall, is a question for further research. Regarding the rewards of procrastination, McCown and Johnson (1991) indirectly tested the tenets of reinforcement theory by examining what students do when they avoid studying. Not surprisingly, students engaged in a variety of activities that they found more reinforcing than



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



27



studying. Extraverted students tended to associate with larger numbers of people, while introverted students tended to prefer more isolated settings. Regardless, students tended to perform activities that were seen as more enjoyable than studying, suggesting the utility of the reinforcement paradigm for deciphering causality of procrastination. Regarding punishment (another important topic for behaviorists), Solomon and Rothblum (1984) studied academic procrastination in 342 college students. They factor analyzed the reasons given by students for individual incidences of procrastination. A general factor of "task unpleasantness" emerged from the matrix, which accounted for about one-fourth of the variance. Students procrastinated tasks that they found unpleasant. The belief is that many people simply do not complete tasks that are aversive, thus adding to the utility of a behavioral account of procrastination. One hypothesis, deductible from learning theory, is that people are likely to procrastinate actions that have more distant consequences than those with immediate consequences (Ferrari & Emmons, in press). We recently tested this directly in work from our laboratories. Students. were given two brief reading tests to perform, labeled the "red" test and the "blue" test. They were then told that these tasks could be completed in about 30 seconds each and were quite easy. However, if students did not complete them, they would receive mild shocks and would not get paid for completion of the experiment. They would be shocked once and lose half their money for failing to perform the red test and be shocked another time and lose half their money for failing to complete the blue test. (In reality, no students were shocked for any lack of performance and all students were paid.) A "sample test" which was "passed" by 100% of the students was completed by each participant and students were told that the level of difficulty of the red and blue tests would be "almost identical" to the sample test. This sample test involved predicting an extremely simple numeric sequence and selecting the choice of answers from a potential list of responses which included only one alternative with any possibility of being valid. Students were randomly assigned to two groups, each receiving a different set of instructions. The first group was told that they would be shocked and lose half of their money 5 minutes after the experiment began if they did not complete the blue test, and again at 10 minutes after the experiment if they did not complete the red test. A second group was told that they would be shocked after a 5-minute interval and lose half of their money if they did not complete the red test, and again at 10 minutes if they did not complete the blue test. Students were then given an additional trial of an extraordinarily easy



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sample-test item and reminded that the level of difficulty of the actual red and blue tests would be "exactly the same as the sample." The dependent measure was the"color" of the test the students chose to solve first. In the first condition, a significantly greater number of subjects chose the red over the blue test to solve first; in the second condition, the results were reversed. This is true despite the fact that, logically, it should have made no difference which test was solved first because subjects had experience with items and knew that they had ample time to complete both tests well within the time limits imposed by the experimenter. Post hoc credibility checks, which removed subjects from the analysis who believed that the experimenter intended to deceive them with harder problems, did not change the results. These findings support the hypothesis that tasks are less likely to be procrastinated if there is the likelihood of punishment in the near future, as compared to at a distant time. Escape and Avoidance Conditioning Contemporary learning theory is much more sophisticated than a simple analysis of rewards and punishments. Such theory also emphasizes active and passive behaviors responsible for avoidance. The notion of avoiding or escaping the noxious stimuli of studying seems to be an intuitive aspect relevant to an explanation for procrastination. Indeed, procrastination is seen by some writers as a means of avoiding or escaping responsibilities (Ferrari & Emmons, in press). Parallels with learning theory are intuitive, obvious, and warrant further exploration (Barton & Ascione,1978). Escape conditioning may be a useful starting point for this exploration. Escape conditioning occurs when a response terminates an aversive stimulus after the stimulus has appeared. Strong generalization effects appear during the initial exposure to escape situations; however, the gradual development of discriminative properties by the aversive stimulus narrows the performance, and low intensity of the aversive stimulus may eventually maintain an operant escape performance that requires a more intense aversive stimulus to establish (Mazur, 1990). It also should be recalled that extinction of an operant escape response occurs rapidly when presentation of the aversive stimulus is discontinued, or occurs more slowly and erratically if the occurrence of the operant is reinforced by withdrawal of the recurring aversive stimulus. Avoidance conditioning is defined by the occurrence of an operant response that postpones an aversive stimulus (Mazur, 1990). Avoidance performances may be established and maintained in the presence or



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



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absence of a warning stimulus preceding the aversive stimulus. When an exteroceptive warning stimulus precedes the aversive stimulus, respondent conditioning effects operate to endow the warning stimulus with aversive properties (Tharp & Wetzel, 1969). The termination of the warning stimulus, following the operant avoidance response, probably combines with the continued absence of the aversive stimulus to act as a reinforcer. The complexity of the avoidance process is suggested by the functionally simultaneous properties acquired by the conditioned aversive warning stimulus as (1) an eliciting environmental event for respondent behaviors; (2) a conditioned aversive punishe~ withdrawal of which strengthens the operant avoidance performance; and (3) a discriminative stimulus, which presents the occasion for operant avoidance (Skinner, 1969). Procrastination may be seen as either escape or avoidance behavior. It represents escape conditioning when a person begins to perform a task and then aborts it and the task remains incomplete (Honig, 1966). Silver (1974) described a similar phenomenon as "maintaining the procrastinating field," in which a person engages in behaviors that are but an incomplete and preliminary part of the entire task that needs to be accomplished. Procrastination may represent avoidance conditioning when the behavior in question is never undertaken and is completely avoided. This is especially true when an external stimulus serves as a stimulus for the avoidance. What is the discriminative stimulus for procrastination? Writers as diverse as Burka and Yuen (1983), who write out of the psychodynamic orientation, and Solomon and Rothblum (1984), who work in the behavioral and cognitive-behavioral tradition, argue that a discriminative cue is anxiety. Students who have extreme anxiety are most likely to procrastinate because it is more reinforcing to avoid the anxiety assodated with studying than it is to study. McCown and Johnson (1989a, b) expanded on this concept of anxiety and task avoidance by a repeated measure involving daily assessment of anxious students who were also procrastinators. Students were assessed twice a day for 14 days. Figure 2-1 illustrates the pattern of anxiety reported by these students and its relation to the number of hours spent studying. Anxiety peaks early for these students and then dissipates. Studying follows a similar pattern. Howeve~ as the exam period nears, anxiety increases. Apparently, at a point near the exam period, anxiety rises abruptly so that students are no longer able to avoid it by postponement of studying. At this point comes the frantic last-minute studying that is the hallmark of many chronic academic procrastinators. We will return to the role of anxiety in the chapter regarding the treatment of procrastination and also later in this chapter.



30



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Phobias Because phobias are assumed to have a learned component, they are frequently included under discussions regarding behaviorism. There is a substantial behavioral literature regarding phobic task avoidance (Gray, 1987; Marks, 1969), and occasionally procrastination seems to mask genuine phobic behaviors. For example, some people with physician and



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



31



medically related phobias avoid preventative medical care, and some patients with generalized anxiety disorders avoid a large variety of activities. Clinically, one of the authors has treated a woman with medical procrastination who constantly put off seeing physicians and dentists. This woman actually had a blood phobia and fainted at the sight of other people's blood. She was treated successfully with a combination of in vivo therapy and the technique of Ost and Sterner (1987), which teaches clients who are blood phobic to flex muscles in response to conditioned faintness. In some cases, procrastination may be a simple phobia and may be rather easily treated. On the other hand, we doubt that the dynamics of procrastination can be accounted for by the simple phobia model. Phobias and other major fears traditionally assumed to be "neurotic" are invariably described by the person experiencing them as generating a high degree of emotionality and an awareness of the phobic stimulus. Avoidance of phobic stimuli becomes quite "rational" insomuch as the emotional cost of performing an activity involving the phobia can easily be recognized as being extraordinarily high. Procrastinators, on the other hand, often have difficulty knowing what they are avoiding. It is much harder for them to indicate a specific event that they are avoiding in order to reduce fear. Because of this high level of fear, phobic patients are usually quite motivated to seek treatment, whereas chronic procrastinators may not be. Recent unpublished work from our lab attempted to highlight the differential features of procrastination. In a laboratory analogue experiment, we found that phobic patients would pay more than eight times as much money to avoid a phobic stimulus as procrastinators would to avoid performing a previously evaded task. This dramatic difference (in conjunction with the preliminary data presented in Chapter 1 showing that phobics displayed average procrastination) suggests that procrastination and phobias are not on a continuum, but represent categorically different behaviors. Further research will need to determine whether the phobia model can contribute substantially to an understanding of procrastination. PROCRASTINATION AND SPEOOUS REWARDS



From learning theory the question arises regarding the ultimate aversiveness of punishments regarding procrastination. If a procrastinator is ultimately punished for his or her behavior-for example, by having to stay up all night to meet the deadline imposed by the Internal Revenue Service-isn't this a punishment that will eventually extinguish procrastination? Not necessarily. Basic laws of learning stress the necessity of



32



CHAPrER2



temporal connection between a behavior and its consequences in order for consequences to have a significant effect. These are discussed under the concept of specious rewards, one of a number of terms used to indicate the human proclivity to choose a short-term but lesser good over a delayed and longer-term outcome with a higher hedonic value. Ainslie's (1975, 1992) theory of specious rewards is a positivereinforcement variation of avoidance conditioning that might shed further light on the application of principles of learning to the understanding of procrastination. Ainslie stated that there is a strong human tendency to choose the short-term reward over the long-term goal, providing that the short-term goal is immediately pleasurable. The application of this to the procrastination theory is immediately evident: For the procrastinator, this tendency is said to have developed into a habit. As a result, an unfortunate feedback loop has developed. The completion of a goal is short-circuited by the demands for leisure, increasing the anxiety associated with the task at hand. Such anxiety tends to increase avoidance. A direct test of Ainslie's theory as it relates to procrastination would be to place people under conditions in which they would receive a minimal positive reward versus a larger, but more delayed, positive reward. To date, this experiment has not been performed. However, additional hypotheses generated from Ainslie's theory are discussed in Chapter 4. BEHAVIORISM AND PRoGRAMMED SYSTEMS OF INSTRUCTION



Behaviorism has been associated with one additional line of productive procrastination research. A group of behaviorists attempted to apply Skinner's (1953) notion of personalized module-based teaching packages, popular in the 60s and 70s. A personalized system of instruction (or PSI) is a small unit-based module of academic material administered to a student at his or her own pace. The concept of PSI is a direct application of Skinnerian principles of reinforcement to the classroom (Morris, Surber, & Bijou, 1978). Typically, module packages in such systems are accompanied by frequent feedback and positive reinforcement rather than by punishment or negative reinforcement. Initially, PSI curriculum held great promise for increasing school achievement in an egalitarian fashion. In theory, students can be taught at their own individual paces (Lloyd & Zylla, 1981). Intelligence, prior learning, sociocultural experiences, and other individual differences that might affect traditional learning in a larger classroom could be minimized. PSI was seen, quite legitimately, as a great tool for democratic education, one of the first truly revolutionary restructurings of learning experiences since the practices of John Dewey (Nelson & Scott, 1972).



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However, Brooke and Ruthen (1984) noted a gradual abandonment of the hope that programmed systems of instruction may be viable classroom alternatives to ordinary instruction. A major barrier to utilization of this educational tool is the tendency of many students to procrastinate completion of PSI modules. In a PSI course, students are responsible for completing a certain number of such modules, proceeding at their own pace. The advantage of PSI is that it allows students of varying skills to obtain total mastery of course material by spending as much or as little time as is necessary for anyone portion of the course (Kulik, Fulik, & Carmichael, 1974). Naturally, the feasibility of such a program is dependent upon cooperation and adequate study habits of students. Rigid deadlines requiring module completion by a particular time destroy the system's flexibility for students having problems with particular areas and for slow learners. On the other hand, the absence of deadlines encourages at least some students to put off module assignments until the very last possible minute. Such a strategy causes undue stress and a decrease in mastery and retention of academic materials. Consequently, the successful prediction of which students will procrastinate in a PSI class and to what extent this procrastination will impact upon learning has been of considerable interest to advocates of PSI. Nelson and Scott (1972) examined the impact that academic procrastination has on PSI curriculum. They found that approximately half of the students in one such course fell two or more units (weeks) behind during the semester. This resulted in last-minute cramming and academic inefficiency that defeated the purpose of PSI. Lu (1976) found even more startling results. As many as 90% of students fell behind course guidelines at some time during a typical semester when a professor utilized a PSI format. Semb and Glick (1979), in a brief literature review of personalized systems of instruction with a psychology curriculum, found that as many as 44% of students engaged in a "beat it to the wire" strategy in such courses, performing over half of their course work during the last week of the course. As many as 20% of the students in such courses were found to have sustained incompletes or to have made other arrangements to carry the class workload over into the next semester or quarter. Additionally, the attrition rate for PSI courses was almost twice as high as that for traditional lecture-based courses. Brooke and Ruthen (1984) were pessimistic about the prospects of PSI being used constructively, despite its potentially numerous advantages. Procrastinators in such a system circumvent its advantages, leading to frequent course withdrawal. The authors suggested that more research is necessary to establish personality correlates of students who do procrasti-



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nate in such a system, in order to generate early intervention strategies to arrest this behavior. To date, attempts to discover personality or demographic variables predictive of procrastination in personalized systems of instruction have not been particularly successful. Newman, Ball, Young, Smith, and Purtle (1974), for example, failed to delineate any personality or attitudinal differences in procrastinating students using a PSI curriculum. However, they did find a consistent"core group" of 20-30% of otherwise unremarkable students who tend to procrastinate regardless of the type of curriculum. Despite these studies, there is little useful information that teachers can surmise to differentiate potential procrastinators from other students in the PSI curriculum (see Ferrari, Parker, & Ware, 1992). CRITIQUE OF BEHAVIORISM AS EXPLANATION OF PROCRASTINATION



It is easy to postulate that procrastination represents a form of avoidance or escape conditioning, or that it largely can be predicted solely from a person's reinforcement history. However, behavioral learning theory is less effective in explaining and predicting individual differences in procrastinating behavior. Escape and avoidance conditioning are powerful forms of conditioning and, theoretically, should exist each time an aversive task is capable of being procrastinated. But this clearly is not the case: Some people procrastinate much of the time; most others do not. Some people with previous histories of punctuality procrastinate obstinately when faced with a particular type of new task, such as a doctoral dissertation. It is probably necessary to go beyond mere reinforcement history and look for individual factors of the person that explain these differences. During the last two decades in psychology it has become common to discuss a person-environment fit perspective as necessary for causation (Endler & Magnusson, 1976). Other authors have suggested that the concept of person not only includes reinforcement histories, but also temperamental or other difficult-to-change individual-differences variables.



COGNITIVE AND COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THEORIES OF PROCRASTINATION Cognitive-behavioral theories of procrastination have a brief but promising history. The distinction between cognitive and personologically oriented theories is often one of degree. As Cattell (1983) argued, it is frequently difficult to classify individual differences as being part of "personality," "cognition," or "temperament." We will use the classifica-



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



35



tion schema advocated by Zuckerman (1991), who suggested that variables with a substantial known biological underpinning be labeled as temperament and that other variables be labeled as cognition. Furthermore, the distinctions between subtypes of cognitive schema that are hypothesized to differentiate procrastinators from others are often arbitrary taxonomy. Therefore, the distinctions between the purported types of cognitive distortions outlined in the next section may be mainly heuristic. IRRATIONAL BELIEFS



Ellis and Knaus (1977) popularized the first cognitive-behavioral explanation of procrastination, based largely on earlier speculation by Knaus (1973). They stated that their clinical experiences related procrastination to irrational fears and self-criticism. Procrastinators, they argued, are frequently unsure of their ability to complete a task. Consequently, they delay starting the task in question. At the heart of such irrational fear for procrastinators is an inappropriate concept of what constitutes an adequately accomplished task. Failure is inevitable; standards are simply too high. To circumvent the emotional consequence of this failure, procrastinators delay beginning a task until it cannot be completed satisfactorily. The payoff for the procrastinator is that his or her avoidant behavior furnishes a convenient excuse for the inevitable failure caused by this avoidance. A task done poorly by the procrastinator can be blamed on time limitation or even laziness, rather than inability. In this manner, procrastination serves as an ego-defensive function, not unlike that postulated in psychoanalytic theory. Furthermore, its occurrence is perpetuated because of this reason, despite the anxiety it seems to create in the frantic last-minute efforts of the procrastinator. Evidence offers at least partial support for the Ellis and Knaus (1977) theory that procrastination is related to the irrational cognitive process of procrastinators. Solomon and Rothblum (1984), discussed previously, studied the frequency of academic procrastination in 342 college students. They factor analyzed the results of a questionnaire designed to detect the reasons for student procrastination (called the PASS and discussed in Chapter 3). They found a second general factor, again accounting for onefourth of the total variance, relating to fear of failure. Simply put, students avoided doing assignments that they perceived could not be completed adequately. Unfortunately, there was no attempt to ascertain to what degree the students' beliefs were actually correct, as compared to irrational. It may simply be that students avoided tasks that they had no ability to perform, in which case the avoidance behavior would have been highly rational indeed.



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Ferrari, Parker, and Ware (1992) attempted to expand the study of academic procrastination and cognitive beliefs using the PASS and several personality measures. Fear-of-failure scores were significantly related to general self-efficacy scores but not to academic locus of control. In a related study, Ferrari (199lc) found that when given a chance to create projects they might work on, procrastinators chose easy tasks, characterized by being of little diagnostic ability. Nonprocrastinators chose diagnostically relevant items, presumably to gain additional information on selfrelevant variables. Procrastinators avoided such diagnostic information, perhaps out of fear of failure. Avoiding diagnostic information would lower the probability that self-confirmation would indicate lack of ability. Therefore, procrastinating behavior was protective in the sense the individual is shielded from self-knowledge regarding lack of ability or competence. SELF-STATEMENTS AND PRIvATE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS



Greco (1985) developed a self-statement inventory of cognitions associated with procrastination. He reported data suggesting that procrastinators are more likely to engage in negative self-talk, especially regarding excuse making. This inventory was designed to be used both as an assessment tool and as a treatment strategy. Individuals in treatment begin by monitoring their self-statements regarding completion of specific tasks that have caused them difficulty in the past. Once the client becomes aware of the pattern of cognitions associated with procrastination, the general direction of these cognitions serve as impetus for monitoring undesirable behavioral correlates frequently found to follow these thoughts. On the other hand, research is not universal regarding the importance of cognitive self-statements. Rothblum, Solomon, and Murakami (1986) noted that'~ . . high procrastinators do not differ from low procrastinators in their study behavior or even on negative cognitions" (i.e., selfstatements) "nearly as much as they differ on anxiety" (p. 394). Furthermore, as in much of the cognitive self-statement literature, it is impossible to determine whether negative self-statements are a cause or an effect of procrastination. The use of self-talk and other f9rms of self-monitoring will be discussed more extensively in Chapter 10 regarding treatment. Since 1975, there have been approximately 200 studies on dispositional tendencies to engage in private self-awareness. A consensus of the literature is that low self-consciousness people are more likely to avoid or be less aware of unpleasant psychological states. It has been suggested that private self-consciousness is related to two factors: a desire to have more information about the self, and a desire to avoid negative information



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



37



about oneself. Ferrari (1989b) found that private self-consciousness was significantly related to self-reported procrastination frequency, but the magnitude of the coefficient was small (.19). No direct assessment exists, however, on which of the two motives for private self-consciousness may be operating with chronic procrastinators. Future research with these variables may be fruitful.



Locus OF CONTROL AND LEARNED HELPLESSNESS Taylor (1979) suggested that the cognitive variable of locus of control might provide fertile ground for future research on procrastination. To date, results with this variable have been mixed. Briordy (1980) found no relation between self-reported procrastination and three different locus of control scales. Ferrari et al. (1992) also reported no significant relationship between academic procrastination (assessed on the PASS) and academic locus of control. Aitken (1982) found a nonsignificant correlation between her procrastination measure and Rotter's Locus of Control Scale. Howeve~ Powers (1985) found that internal locus of control was higher in nonprocrastinators. Although a relationship between procrastination and locus of control seems intuitively logical, the current set of data suggests a compl~ relation at best. Clearly, further research is needed. 1iice and Milton (1987) further suggested that generalized locus of control may not be as useful in predicting academic procrastination as an academic-specific measure, such as the one constructed by the authors for their study. Locus of control likely has a relation to causal attributions (explanations) regarding task success or failure. Learned helplessness, a construct related to locus of control, has remained one of the more popular topics in the cognitive-psychopathology literature. The so-called "reformulation" of the learned helplessness model (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) has emphasized the stability of attributions regarding the environment and personal behavior. Rothblum et al. (1986) found that high procrastinators were significantly more likely than low procrastinators to attribute success on examinations to external and unstable factors. Both procrastinators and nonprocrastinators increased studying as a deadline loomed, but unlike the study of McCown and Johnson (1989a,b), both groups reported less anxiety as the deadlines approached. High procrastinators, particularly women, were also significantly more likely than were low procrastinators to report more test anxiety, state anxiety, and anxiety-related physical symptoms. Perhaps the most comprehensive study regarding learned helplessness and procrastination was the dissertation by McKean (1990), who di-



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CHAPTER 2



rect1y tested several hypotheses from the reformulated learned helplessness model as they apply to procrastinators. Academic procrastination was measured by the PASS (discussed in Chapter 3). Academic procrastinators were found to display a significantly elevated expectation of task uncontrollability, a significantly greater level for active depression, and lower grade point averages. A key hypothesis that they would endorse a more pessimistic explanatory style of explaining negative events was not supported. Furthermore, an attempt to demonstrate that academic procrastinators are more susceptible to laboratory-induced learned helplessness was not supported. IRRATIONAL PERFECTIONISM



Clinicians often claim that perfectionism is a primary motive for procrastination (Burka & Yuen, 1983; Ellis & Knaus, 1977). Presumably, a person procrastinates in order to gain additional time to produce the best possible product (Ferrari, 1992b). When personal standards regarding task completion are irrationally high, it is hypothesized that tasks are unlikely to be completed in a punctual manner. Chapter 8 discusses the relationship of perfectionism to procrastination in detail. DEPRESSION, WW SELF-ESTEEM, AND ANXIETY Depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety often occur together (U\bate, 1994). At times it is difficult to draw distinctions between these syndromes, suggesting that a common factor may be responsible for all three (Eysenck, 1970). Howeve~ despite their frequent cooccurrences, most investigators have viewed these constructs as being somewhat independent of one another and warranting separate study. Surprisingly, little is known about the relationship of depression and procrastination. Clinicians frequently report that depressed people don't get things done promptly. Sometimes it is noted that specific failure to complete tasks may cause depression. Intuitively, this makes sense. Most of us have experience with feeling dejected following an inability to meet a deadline. However, data presented in Chapter 1 indicates that depressed people do not score higher on the Adult Inventory of Procrastination. Other data ijohnson, 1992) suggests that procrastination may be a risk factor for more serious depression, as well as anxiety (discussed later). Low self-esteem is characterized by many contemporary theorists as a product of an extensive history of failure to meet internally generated expectations (L'Abate, 1994). Intuitively, one might expect that people with



PROCRASTINATION RESEARCH



39



low self-esteem would put off completing tasks. On the other hand, people who do not complete tasks might very well develop low selfesteem, especially during periods of their lives when punctuality is highly reinforced, such as during college. Data does not allow for causal inference, but does support a moderate relationship between self-esteem and procrastination. Aitken (1982) found a correlation of -.42 between "low self-concept" (measured by the Tennessee Self-Concept scale, Fitts, 1965) and academic procrastination scores. Similar correlational findings have been reported elsewhere (Effert & Ferrari, 1989; Ferrari, 1989b, 1992b) and appear to be consistent throughout all studies in the literature. The relationship between anxiety and procrastination is more complex and controversial. Earlier in this chapter, we discussed how anxiety might be a discriminative stimulus for avoidance. The role of anxiety as a cue for task avoidance has been discussed above and appears to have some support. A separate question involves whether or not procrastinators are more or less anxious than nonprocrastinators. Aitken (1982) tested the hypothesis that procrastination is related to an elevated level of anxiety. She correlated academic procrastination scores from her inventory with a measure of anxiety (the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, Taylor, 1953). Procrastination scores correlated only slightly with this measure (.21, p < .05). Although significant, this correlation accounts for only about 5% of the total variance. McCown, Rupert, and Petzel (1987) found a strong curvilinear relationship between neuroticism scores (as measured by the Brief Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Revised) and academic procrastination (as measured by Aitken). High neuroticism scores were related with the first and fourth quadrants of scoring on the Aitken measure. Students who were extremely habitual and timely were more likely to be higher on the neurotic score. Students who were extremely procrastinating were also likely to score high on neuroticism. These authors suggest that, depending upon other factors, neuroticism or autonomic activity can serve as either signals to get things done or as signals to avoid things. Lay, Edwards, Parker, and Endler (1989) report a more linear relationship between anxiety and procrastination, with anxiety increasing among procrastinators during an exam period. Rothblum, Solomon, and Marakami (1986) report that test and trait anxiety is particularly problematic for female procrastinators and believe that anxiety reduction is key for reducing procrastination, especially in women. The relationship between anxiety and procrastination is probably complex and depends largely on measurement methodology. This may be because anxiety is a multidimensional mixture of both cognitive and physiological variables (Gray, 1987; Zuckerman, 1991). Chapter 5 further discusses this relationship.



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CHAPTER 2



TEMPERAMENTAL AND PERSONOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS A number of different temperamental or personological differences have been hypothesized to be related to procrastination. As stated previously, it is often difficult to determine which variables are "cognitive" and which are related to "traditional" theories regarding more inherent individual differences. ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION AND PROCRASTINATION



One of the classic constructs in motivational research has been individual differences in achievement motivation-a variable that spans the division between a cognitive and personological construct. Low negative correlations have been found between various nonprojective measures for achievement and chronic procrastination. Briordy (1980), for instance, found that students who self-reported frequent procrastination showed less achievement motivation, as measured by self-statements. Sweeny, Butle~ and Rosen (1979) found a negative correlation ( - .30) between selfreported procrastination and achievement motivation. Aitken (1982) reported a negative correlation (- .36) between procrastination, as measured by her scale, and achievement motivations measured by Jackson'S Personality Research Form. On the other hand, Taylor (1979) found no significant differences in achievement motivation between procrastinators and punctual students. To date, no studies exist to link achievement motivation, measured projectively with the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and procrastination. McCown (1994) examined achievement motivation in college students, including a group that was at high risk for behavioral and other problems, due to a history of abuse. Procrastination correlated -.47 with the need for achievement. To some extent, these effects were mediated by the need for interpersonal intimacy, also measured by the TAT. When this was partialed out, the correlation dropped to - .32. McCown stated that procrastination seems to be somewhat fostered by the tendency to be engaged in deep, intimate discussion, probably because it takes time away from the individual who otherwise could be engaged in academic pursuits. INTELLIGENCE AND ABILITY



More intelligent students probably have a greater capacity for successful"last minute" performance. However, the underlying assumption from behavioral and cognitive-behavioral research is that students who showed



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41



less ability are those most likely to procrastinate. It is not surprising that such significant differences have been found between groups on these variables. Ferrari (1991a) compared procrastinators and nonprocrastinators on intelligence measures. He found that they did not differ significantly on verbal or abstract-thinking abilities, as assessed on the Shipley (1940) Intelligence Test. A study cited earlier is relevant to the discussion of academic procrastination and ability. Blatt and Quinlan (1967) found no significant differences between overall grade point average and procrastination. Similarly, Newman, Ball, Young, Smith, and Purtle (1974) found that procrastination was unrelated to grade point average, and only insignificantly related to the final grade in a PSI class. Several other studies appear in the literature supporting the hypothesis that academic procrastination. is unrelated to ability. Rosati (1975) operationally defined procrastination as the number of modules completed in a self-paced engineering class. He found no differences between procrastinating and nonprocrastinating students on grade point average or mathematical ability. Taylor (1979) constructed a self-report questionnaire to distinguish procrastinating from nonprocrastinating students. He also found no significant difference between the two groups in terms of grade point averages or WAIS scores. Ely and Hampton (1973) found that English Achievement Tests (ACT) and a composite of algebra achievement-test scores correlated negatively with procrastination, at least in a PSI curriculum. It is important to note, however, that these researchers used a battery of 11 different achievement tests and found only two significant (p < .05) correlations with procrastination. Furthermore, the multiple-regression composite of the tests utilized accounted for only a small portion of the total variance between procrastinating students and their more punctual peers. On the other hand, Morris, Surber, and Bijou (1978) found that students who procrastinated in a PSI course tended to be better students than nonprocrastinators. This fact might be because brighter students feel more comfortable putting off work until the last minute. O~ it also could be that the brighter students had more difficult academic "completion" from other courses and scarce resources of time. In this case the PSI simply was "triaged" until later. Aitken (1982) found that academic procrastinators actually had slightly significantly higher math SAT scores than punctual students. This led her to advance the hypothesis, similar to that of Morris et al. (1978), that procrastination is more common in capable students who have learned that they possess the cognitive abilities to perform the bulk of their course work at the last minute and still do reasonably well in school.



42



CHAPI'ER2



The largest study regarding academic procrastination and intelligence was conducted by McCown and Ferrari (1995a) who examined archival data from the 1970s in a PSI-based high school. The data were interesting because they were obtained from a Hschool without walls" where students could pursue a number of nontraditional subjects in addition to the requirement of completion of a certain number of PSI modules for each academic subject. Due to this fact, there was little academic demand or necessity for cramming. Most students who did avoid doing PSI modules did so to participate more fully in artistic or political endeavors. Additionally, because the school drew largely upper-middle-class students, SAT scores were available from practically an entire group and were part of the students' records. Finally, despite the PSI nature of the curriculum, a standardized test drawn from PSI questions was given at the end of the year-one used by administrators to attempt to prove the superiority of this type of program over more traditional methods. Data analysis showed a slight, yet significant, correlation between SAT scores and a tendency to fall behind during the semeste~ as measured by days behind per unit (r = .14, P < .01). However, mathematics SAT scores correlated negatively with the tendency to put off mathematics and science modules (r = - .17, P < .01). Students who do poorly in math and science may procrastinate these subjects in particular. In fact, maximal procrastination was found with students who scored well on the verbal SAT, less well on the nonverbal sections, and who procrastinated in mathematics and science courses. Taken together, it seems that in a PSI curriculum, high verbal ability is associated with procrastination of verbal curriculum, while low math ability is associated with procrastination of mathematics-based work. Interestingly, in this study there was a very high correlation between the measure of falling behind and the final (nonbinding) test grade (r = .56, P < .001). The uniqueness of this measure should be emphasized. It was not connected to final student evaluation or grade, and no feedback was given to the student. Consequently, there was no incentive to study for it. However, it might be stated that this measure was a legitimate sampling of what was actually learned and retained from the curriculum. Students who did substantial last-minute cramming learned less and retained less, despite being able to complete PSI modules Hsatisfactorily." IMPULSIVITY AND EXTRAVERSION



Aitken (1982) found a small, though statistically significant, correlation between self-reported procrastination and impulsivity (.21, P < .05). She considered this partial support for one Ellis and Knaus (1977) claim,



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43



namely that procrastination is related to an inability to delay gratification. However, she cautiously noted that this relationship might be surprisingly high. Her test measure, the Personality Research Form (PRF), showed a high correlation between subscales measuring achievement motivation and "lack of impulsivity." Although these subscales are not orthogonal, it is likely that the impulsivity detected by the PRF for procrastinators is the same factor as the lack of achievement the test also measures in procrastinators. McCown (1995) examines the relationship between impulsivity, venturesomeness, empathy, and procrastination in college students and adults. He finds significant correlations between procrastination and measures of impulsivity and venturesomeness in college students, and in adults, only for impulsivity. He believes that the routinization of adult life, compared with the diverse entertainment opportunities in college, provides for greater relationship between procrastination and venturesomeness, and its lack of relation in adulthood. Regarding extraversion, McCown, Petzel, and Rupert (1987) found a significant and quite high relation (.60, p < .01) between academic procrastination (measured by the Aitken [1982] measure) and extraversion (assessed by the Brief EPQ-R). It is easy to see that extraversion might be related to procrastination. Extraverts may have more distractions in completing tasks, since they are more social. Furthermore, extraverts are more likely to need a variety of social and nonsocial stimulations (Eysenck, 1967). Consequently, they are less likely to start and finish a task in one sitting. It should be noted, howeve~ that a correlation this high has not been reproduced by our laboratory on subsequent occasions. Therefore, it may be that students who volunteered for the study represented those individuals self-selected on one of the last possible days to obtain experimental credits, and hence are a skewed sample. CONSOENTIOUSNESS



Johnson and Bloom (1993) examined procrastination from the perspective of the five-factor model of personality. This "Big Five" framework includes the major factors of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1989). Each factor is composed of several dimensions, or facets, and can be reliably measured through use of the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1989). In Johnson and Bloom's (1993) study, college undergraduates (N = 210) completed the Aitken (1982) measure of procrastination and the NEOPI-R. Multiple regression procedures yielded the factor of Conscientiousness as the major factor accounting for variance in procrastination scores.



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CHAPTER 2



Neuroticism was also significantly related to scores. Contrary to previous findings (e.g., McCown, Petzel, & Rupert, 1987), Extraversion was not significantly related to procrastination scores. However, this latter finding likely relates to the fact that the EPQ-R, used in the McCown et al. (1987) study, differs from the NEO-PI-R in measurement of Extraversion. Thus, when major factors are taken together, procrastinators appear to be largely characterized by a lack of Conscientiousness. Their scores were Significantly related to each facet of this factor, indicating that procrastinators can be described as lacking self-discipline, dutifulness, and order. Further research is indicated to identify the exact nature of the relation between both Neuroticism and Extraversion, because the Johnson and Bloom (1993) study failed to replicate previous research on these two factors and procrastination. Although this lack of replication relates to the differences in the measurement of these variables, future research is necessary to further examine these differences. DIFFERENCES IN CAPACITY FOR ACCURATE TIME PERCEPTION



A popular self-help book on procrastination (Burka & Yuen, 1983) suggested that procrastination is related to an inability to estimate time correctly. Burka and Yuen relied upon their clinical experiences with treating this problem, rather than empirical findings. As noted previously, procrastination tendencies have been associated with a "present-oriented" perspective (Blatt & Quinlan, 1967). Wessman (1973) found that some individuals are ineffective users of time and lack a sense of punctuality. Gorman and Wessman (1977), uncertain about the meaning of this fact, urged future investigators to bear in mind that there is probably more than one dimension to time-oriented behaviors. Aitken (1982) attempted to correlate scores on her academic procrastination questionnaire with experimental measures of the passage of time. She administered her questionnaire to UO students, and tested them on several measures of time estimation. No Significant correlations were found between the procrastination scores and the following: students' estimates of a period of 30-second intervals; intervals of 4 minutes; 20 minutes; and their estimates of how much time was left until the end of a class period. The only significant correlation was between the procrastination scores and students' estimates of how long they thought it would take them to do a required task (e.g., read a brief passage). Not surprisingly, procrastinators tended to underestimate time necessary to complete a task, while nonprocrastinators tended to overestimate this period. This finding was replicated by McCown (1986), who found that while both procrastinators and nonprocrastinators tend to take equal time to complete



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a reading passage, procrastinators underestimate the amount of time that they require. McCown (1986), however, failed to find that either group was more accurate, although nonprocrastinators tended to have higher correlations with the actual correct time (r = .38, P < .10). For procrastinators, the correlation was practically nonexistent. External stress applied via a distracting audio procedure failed to influence either the perception or the actual correct time. Procrastinators also failed to inaccurately estimate the correct time of day (Le., the question ''What time is it?") more than nonprocrastinators.



NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL AND BIOWGICAL VARIABLES The demarcation between personality-oriented and biological variables regarding human behavior is also somewhat arbitrary. Most authorities now recognize the role of both nature and nurture in human behavior. In this section we will limit discussion to variables that are primarily physiological and appear not to have a substantial component involving learning in their development or expression. Strub (1989) discussed a neurologic syndrome partially characterized by procrastination. This involves a constant tendency toward putting off major life tasks (such as buying food). Etiologically, this syndrome appears to be due to damage to the dominant frontal or prefrontal lobes. Johnson and McCown (1995) discussed this syndrome further, as it relates to a variety of acquired neurobehavioral disorders. To date, however, almost nothing is known regarding the neuropsychology of procrastination. theoretically, it is possible that less severe chronic procrastinators exhibit subtle neuropsychological deficits related to executive functioning, but currently this remains simply an interesting speculation. Other notions of direct biological differences between procrastinators and nonprocrastinators are merely speculative. Howeve~ neuroticism and impulsiveness/psychoticism-variables that apparently differentiate pr 75). Students who score higher than this somewhat arbitrary cutoff on any of the clinical scales are referred to individual therapy. An exception is the F scale, a validity scale that may be elevated when students first seek help for their behavioral problems, and the K scale, which is usually seen as a positive sign of defensiveness (Graham, 1987). Other students may be appropriately referred for group treatment, providing there is nothing in their histories to suggest the need for more intensive therapeutic modalities. After students complete the MMPI, we attempt to obtain a general psychosocial history which emphasizes procrastination, but which is not limited to this topic. Collecting a case history is complicated by the fact that students may not have been aware of longstanding procrastination behaviors until placed in a socially and academically challenging environment. Procrastination is more likely to be a salient issue only for the young



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adult, becoming an important developmental issue as the student encounters a more rigorous workload. Regardless, the case history will include questions regarding how long procrastination has been a problem for the student, the degree to which he or she feels it impairs grades, and, perhaps most importantly, what the student has attempted to do about his or her behavior in the past. Not infrequently, students who seek treatment for procrastination may be in psychotherapy elsewhere, and obviously the two treatments must be coordinated. The interviewer should also ask typical questions regarding psychological or psychiatric problems. Students with a clear psychiatric history are often inappropriate for the group treatment that we describe later but may do quite well in a time-limited therapy aimed at addressing specific procrastinatingj,ehaviors. Obvious "rule-outs" with the clinical interview involve low intellectual functioning, dyslexia, focal-neuropsychological deficits (such as visual apraxia), thought disorders, or severe personality disorders. The careful or concerned clinician who suspects cognitive problems administers a WAISR to every client, since it is not only a definitive intellectual assessment tool, but also a good neuropsychological screen (Leazak, 1983). Although we do not know the incidences of neuropsychological impairments in college-student procrastinators, our clinical impression is that it is not infrequent. A pattern that we have seen in about 20 cases involves attention and concentration problems on the WAI5-R and an MMPI profile indicative of increased anxiety. Such students are probably better referred to a neuropsychologist for evaluation and in our (limited) experience do not do well in either group or individual problem-focused treatments. The case studies below indicate the usefulness of a thorough psychological work up, conducted by an experienced clinician. Sean, a first semester senior at a large Midwestern university, consulted with his college-counseling center regarding his inability to study. "I just can't get the hang of it this semester. . . . I'm just putting it off too much." Sean's first academic year had been disastrous. While a student at a more prestigious Eastern college before transferring, he barely maintained a passing average. "I just didn't seem to fit in there the whole year," he offered as an explanation. Having transferred closer to home, his grade point average was maintained at a perfect 4.0. "I'm just really energized being near home, my family, friends, everybody, you know. But this time I'm just losing my.energy." Psychological testing reiterated what the clinical interview had already suggested: Sean was severely depressed. Furthermore, there was evidence of a cyclothymic personality disorder and a familial history of manic depression. A later interview revealed that Sean was able to crudely manipulate his moods through the process of missing sleep, a technique known to interfere with norepinephrine reuptake,



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and thereby influence manic symptoms (Leonard, 1992). By avoiding sleep for a night or two, Sean could induce a hypomanic episode, facilitating a more intense degree of studying than he otherwise could manage in the depressive state that had become more chronic for him. Sean was referred to a psychiatrist and started on lithium carbonate with excellent results. He reported no further problems procrastinating. Judith was a 19-year-old student of outstanding intellectual potential who had been class valedictorian in her high school. She sought referral from an educational counselor for her persistent inability to study material in a timely manner. Despite the fact that her SAT score had been in an enviable range, she was currently in the bottom quartile of her college class. An initial interview by a college counselor suggested that she might benefit from a time-management class conducted through the Continuing Education office. "She just seems like a typical student with time-management issues," the counselor noted. However, a consulting psycholOgist suggested that Judith receive psychological testing because her "time-management problems" seemed incongruous with her outstanding high school scholastic history. Psychological testing with the MMPI suggested presence of an alcohol F,Oblem, which the client readily and somewhat naively admitted when directly questioned. The client's drinking patterns were addressed in treatment and she responded well to therapeutic intervention. In this case the client's procrastination was due to the fact that she spent a good portion of her waking hours quite intoxicated. Once she gained control of her drinking, her intellectual potential was evident and the remainder of her academic career was outstanding. An interesting addendum of this case is that the client successfully applied to medical school, despite her early academic problems. She has now completed medical training and is a psychiatric resident.



GENERAL TREATMENT PHIWSOPHY REGARDING COLLEGE-STUDENT PROCRASTINATION Once other potential psychological factors that may be causing the student difficulty have been ruled out, the treatment of choice for procrastinators is a program designed to address individuals' specific patterns of task avoidance. A general overview is as follows: Persons whose pattern is neurotidanxiouslfearfullavoidant/overaroused benefit from procedures designed to reduce anxiety. Persons who are unconsdentious/sensationseekinglimpulsive/antiauthoritarian/underaroused benefit from a treatment designed to boost concern and forethought, though not necessarily



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anxiety. Since both traits are hypothesized to be normally distributed and orthogonal, it is possible for procrastinators to be both impulsive and task avoidant. These persons require the greatest skill to treat, since the clinician must assist them in simultaneously reducing anxious arousal and increasing goal-oriented arousal. CHANGING COGNITIVE MIsCONCEPTIONS: A KEy TREATMENT STRATEGY FOR ALL TYPES OF PROCRASTINATION



Regardless of typology, a common treatment involves challenging and changing cognitive distortions and misperceptions. Knaus (1973), Ellis and Knaus (1977), and others (e.g., Rorer, 1983; Grecco, 1985) commented regarding the cognitive misconceptions that procrastinators usually display and the etiological role that cognitive misperceptions play in causing procrastination. We do not wish to argue that cognitive processes are themselves causal. They may simply be a covariant or a pathway of other processes, such as an acquired or innate sensitivity to rejection. More data is needed to address this issue. Regardless, and as in the case of depression, such reactions are mediated by cognitive processes. By changing the cognitive misperceptions we are more apt to change the behavior. Based on clinical experience we have found a number of cognitive distortions to be frequent in most procrastinators, regardless of their subtypes. Probably the most universal (our "Big Five") are as follows: 1. Overestimation of the time left to perform a task. 2. Underestimation of time necessary to complete a task. 3. Overestimation of future motivational states. This is typified by statements such as "I'll feel more like doing it later." 4. Misreliance on the necessity of emotional congruence to succeed in a task. Typical is a statement such as "People should only study when they feel good about it." 5. Belief that working when not in the mood is unproductive or suboptimal. Such beliefs are typically expressed by phrases such as "It doesn't do any good to work when you are not motivated."



Also, as mentioned previously, students, particularly those with formerly good academic ability, may also have misconceptions regarding the necessity for studying. For example, it is not uncommon for students transitioning either to college or to graduate school who have been very successful in the past to believe that studying is unnecessary for "truly intelligent" people. As one student recently voiced: "If you don't get it the first time in class you won't get it at all.... At least, that's been my experience. "



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TABLE 9-3. Cognitive Distortions Associated with Anxiety-Related Procrastination Cognitions involving lack of self-efficacy It's hopeless to complete this task. It's too late to complete this task. I could never get the task done to my or my teacher's satisfaction, so why bother now? I'm not smart enough to do this task. I'm too tired to do this task well, so why bother? I'm too uptight (nervous or tense) to get this task done. I'm too inept to get this work done. I've missed so many opportunities so far, so why should I bother? People of my (race, gender, ethnicity, age, etc.) can't do this type of work. Cognitions involving avoidance I'll do it tonight, so I don't have to worry. I'm very good at getting things done at the last minute, so I don't have to worry. If I don't think about doing this task, I won't have to worry as much. I need to distract myself before I perform this task. I won't get this task done unless I relax first. I'm just too stressed to work. I can't work my best until certain times (so I won't start now). I can't work without (a specific person, study room etc.) being available.



Table 9-3 shows a list of other common cognitive misperceptions or distortions. In our experience and also congruent with our theoretical notions, distorted cognitions involve two groups of thoughts. The first group involves those that increase anxiety about a task at hand, thus leading to a feeling that it is futile to attempt task completion. Naturally, these predominate in persons whose procrastination is characterized by fear or anxiety, or a general lack of self-efficacy. The second group of cognitions involve those that act to reduce anxiety, such as "1'11 do it tonight, so I don't need to worry," or "I'm really very good at getting things done at the last minute." These types of cognition are more prominent in persons who are not as conscientious as they should be. The key to our therapeutic strategy is to teach procrastinators to challenge these cognitive distortions (Safran, Vallis, Segel, & Shaw, 1986; Solomon & Rothblum, 1984). Either an individual therapy session or a group format may be an appropriate vehicle to instruct clients in cognitive restructuring. Choice for change may depend on other client aspects, such as the presence of any coexisting psychopathology such as depression or severe anxiety. The sections below highlight strategies for implementing cognitive therapy with college-academic procrastinators meeting in a group format. This method focuses first on challenging anxiety-producing



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cognitions, and second on cognitions associated with a lack of conscientiousness and with impulsivity. In discussing the treatment interventions that we advocate (to follow) we note that we have failed to fmd a significant difference in outcome between persons who are self-referred and other-referred. However, our clinical impression is that other-referred students often have more emotional and psychological problems, conditions that we feel counterindicate group-therapy treatment. For example, they are more likely to demonstrate elevations on the MMPI or other objective psychological tests. While we are not certain why this is true, it does argue for the use of a careful psychological assessment for most persons who seek treatment for procrastination.



MODIFYING COGNITNE DISTORTIONS AND THE ANXIOUS PROCRASTINATOR As indicated in Chapter 2, many students who procrastinate are exceSSively anxious. It makes theoretical sense that treating generalized anxiety, either pharmacologically or behaviorally, might have a therapeutic effect on reducing procrastination. To date, we have tested this hypothesis with 25 students in a pre-posttest design. However, our data indicates that reducing anxiety per se has no significant effect on procrastination scores. An exception is when anxiety becomes debilitating, as seen in the following case study: Jean was a first-generation Asian-American doctoral student in the first semester of medical school. Jean's undergraduate course work and grade point average had been extremely good; however, she had been led to believe that medical school was impossibly difficult. Jean described herself as "always anxious," but noted that the anxiety was always "manageable." This manageability began to change during the first semester of graduate school. Anxiety quickly began to interfere with her ability to concentrate and she began putting off important tasks. As her anxiety began to increase, so did her task avoidance, further fueling her anxiety. By the time she entered treatment at a university counseling center, Jean had begun obsessively ruminating about her course work, repetitively asking the same questions to her classmates about assignment dates and study strategies. It was clear to the therapist that Jean's anxiety had surpassed the point where it could be managed on an outpatient basis. She was briefly hospitalized and given a course of benzodiazepines to provide an immediate calming. Once these symptoms were manageable, it



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was possible to work on her misconceptions regarding academic assignments and to teach Jean general techniques for reducing anxiety. Jean eventually finished out the year and later, all her course work, and obtained an MD.



Use of this case study is not meant to suggest that benzodiazepines are a routine and appropriate treatment for chronic procrastination. There is rarely any excuse for clients to be allowed to become as anxious as Jean became. The host of cognitive and behavioral techniques for chronicanxiety reduction do quite well if applied in time. These may include any of the following: cognitive self-statements, deep-relaxation training, visualization with relaxation, or any of the other popular anxiety treatments discussed by Barlow (1992). However, each treatment should be designed with the goal in mind of increasing frequency and concentration of academic effort. The continuation of the previous case study illustrates how this can occur in the context of anxiety treatment. Once Jean returned to her classes she met weekly with a therapist. During the first interview her pattern regarding upcoming assignments became very clear. Typically, Jean would become extremely anxious, often much too anxious to concentrate. Usually, this anxiety was triggered by cognitive distortions that had little basis in reality, such as the self-statement that "I'm too retarded to learn this stuff" or "Women can't possibly learn this hard science." Soon after thinking these thoughts Jean would try to distract herself with nonacademic activities, such as watching television or listening to music. This approach, of course, was a form of procrastination and ultimately increased her anxiety. With her therapist's help Jean was quickly able to list all of the upcoming course requirements, such as papers and exams. Despite a great deal of anxiety, she was able to design an appropriate schedule that would allow sufficient time for studying. She was then taught a number of relaxation techniques to practice before and during her study time, which was set for a certain number of hours each night. Finally, Jean was able to reduce the number of irrational and anxietyprovoking cognitions that she held, such as that she was destined to fail or that she was not as intelligent as other students because of her ethnic status. Jean later cited the cognitive aspects of her treatment as the most important for her successful "recovery."



Obviously, it would be of great value if we could conduct a clinical trial comparing relaxation training alone to cognitive therapy for treating chronically anxious procrastinators. At this time we do not have this type of data. However, our clinical experience, as well as the posttherapy interviewing of successfully treated clients, seems to indicate that cogni-



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tive challenges of irrational fears are perhaps the most important aspect of treatment for the typically anxious procrastinator. We recommend the use of cognitive interventions for treating these irrational thoughts whenever they are encountered as the primary treatment of anxiety-related procrastination toward goal-focused behavior. This is not to argue that other methods of anxiety reduction are inappropriate or unhelpful. However, cognitive-behavioral interventions are usually presented as the most helpful aspects of treatment by former clients who have successfully completed treatment. In our experience, the reduction of anxiety should proceed in tandem with plans to achieve specific, measurable, behavioral goals. Frequently, specific items of anxiety that cause avoidance can be easily identified, such as an upcoming test, applying for college or graduate school, or in the case of adults, paying income taxes. The next useful step is often to reduce the aversive task into nonoverlapping components, which once completed may signal that the goal is nearer. Table 9-4 shows the components generated for a procrastinator regarding an upcoming history paper that a student that we treated could not accomplish. We have labelled this procedure, simply, as "Developing a Task Plan." Notice that the tasks are divided into simple steps that are clear and are nonoverlapping. Silver (1974) maintains that a tendency of procrastinators is to perseverate on portions of the task they feel they can perform, to the exclusion of other aspects. By developing some specific components, this tendency is circumvented. Note also that the components have specific criteria by which the client and others will know that the task is completed, thus reducing self-deception. Where dates are flexible, it is important to assign concrete deadlines that are"in plain black and white." Finally, note how potential cognitive ''blocks'' associated with anxiety are anticipated, so that they will not be a source of unpredictable anxiety.



COGNITIVE INTERVENTIONS FOR THE LOW-CONSCIENTIOUS PROCRASTINATOR As indicated in Chapters 4 and 5, a major source of variance in the behavior of academic procrastinators is explained by their lack of conscientiousness, their increased impulsiveness, or apparent sensation-seeking. As Lay states in Chapter 5, "It may simply be that such individuals are especially immune to the 'ought' aspects of their everyday world." Our goal, therefore, is to increase the salience of these "oughts" and thereby increase the procrastinator's conscientiousness. To date, little is known about methods of altering conscientiousness,



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TABLE 9-4. An Example of a Task Plan for Mr. A. (19-yeal'-old college student) Task and components I.



Apply for fInancial aid for next year A. Get information packet from school office B. Complete information packet C. Talk to parents about fInancial aid D. Get parents' tax returns mailed to me E. Return packet to fInancial aid office E Call to make sure that packet got there



Due



When done



12/1 11/4 1115 11/9 11117 11124 11128



1112 1115 11/9 11/13 11123 11128



Problems that I expect to have in completing these tasks and what I can do about them: 1. 2.



Calling my parents is something I don't like to do. My dad yells at me. I can be prepared for the fact that he is a jerk. I never have stamps and because of this I usually let mail pile up. This might be because I don't like standing in lines. I can get stamps in the Union building when I get change for video games.



Task and components II.



Apply for summer internship at forensic lab A. Call to get information B. Write appropriate resume C. Write cover letter D. Get Professor H. to write recommendation E. Write Ustatement of goals· EMail package G. Double check on Professor H. H. Call to see if material arrived



Due



When done



12/1 11111 11/14 11/15 11/16 11117 11118 11/24 11/25



11110 11/15 11115 ? 11/17 11/18 11/24 11126



Problems that I expect to have in completing these tasks and what I can do about them: 1. 2.



I get nervous writing because I feel I don't write well. I guess I can use the word processor and grammar checker. I don't want to bother Professor H., even though I know this is part of his job. I should just go ahead and do it. He won't bite and if he does, that's his problem, not mine.



despite the overwhelming importance of this personality factor in a number of psychological problems (Costa & Widiger, 1994). More is known about methods of changing impulSive behavior (McCown, Johnson, & Shure, 1993) and successful methods primarily involve cognitive interventions. Consequently, we suggest that the tt:eatment of choice for underarousedllow-conscientious procrastinators center on changing irrational beliefs regarding task completion. A strategy that seems initially appealing (especially to the inexperienced therapist who has treated very few procrastinators) is simply to raise the anxiety of this underaroused group. The authors once consulted with a



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group of fraternity brothers who managed to reduce some of their academic lateness by constructing progressively larger signs that highlighted the dates on which classroom assignments were due from each fraternity member. We instructed the group to increase the salience of cues, and hence their prominence and anxiety-inducing qualities, as the necessary goal dates drew closer. The students involved in this project reported feeling more "anxiety" about deadlines. However, it is not clear whether they simply meant that they gave more forethought to these dates or if they actually worried more about them. The technique was successful, but this may have been due to the fact that the fraternity faced a suspension from the college if grades did not improve! From our clinical experience we can state that" scare tactics" have the typical efficacy that they do in other areas of behavioral change-usually little or none. This is especially true when the procrastinator has mixed traits of low conscientiousness and high anxiety. Scolding, cajoling, threatening, or other lay techniques also appear equally ineffective. More promising are strategies to get the procrastinator to assess more realistically the optimal time necessary to begin a task that he or she wishes to complete and to challenge cognitions which might interfere with this accurate assessment. One occasionally effective strategy for the early stages of changing the behavior of unconscientious procrastinators is to get them verbally to commit to an estimate of how long it will take them to complete a task or study for a specific upcoming event. The therapist records this information and when it is disconfirmed in the future (since it usually takes much longer to complete a task than these people estimate) the therapist uses this information to begin to challenge other irrational beliefs of the client. Similarly, an identical strategy can be employed for procrastinators who cannot manage time adequately because of problems with "overcommitments." They can be asked to specify in advance the likelihood that a given set of activities (e.g., going out to dinner with friends, doing laundry, copying some school notes, studying for a biology test) will be successfully completed in a limited time period. When it is pointed out to clients that they have overestimated the number of activities that can be performed in an interval, the therapist can then "mount an attack" against the irrational beliefs, armed with the data generated by these time misestimations. The most effective therapeutic style with the unconscientious procrastinator is a firm yet understanding, reality-oriented approach emphasizing the existence of a pattern of self-deception. As in other forms of cognitivebehavioral therapy, insight and self-generated excuses are of no particular value. From time to time it may be necessary to remind clients of their educational goals in order to prevent demoralization because previously



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cherished beliefs are slowly altered. A convenient method in which these cognitions can be challenged in a therapeutic manner is presented in the next section.



GROUP THERAPY FOR ACADEMIC PROCRASTINATORS: THE to-SESSION STRUCTURED MODEL We have developed a 10-session structured treatment program for academic procrastination. Entitled uDoing It Now," this program makes use of the interventions discussed previously, applying them in a manner that is appropriate for both anxious procrastinators and underarousalJlowconscientious persons. In a study with 67 students completing the 10-week course of Doing It Now (out of a total of 74 students who participated in at least the first session), the mean change in scores on the Aitken Procrastination scale was .35 greater than a general academic-skills workshop of similar length, the latter having an effect size of .35 greater than a notreatment wait list. In other words, the treatment provided in Doing It Now has an effect size of .70 over no treatment, an outcome which compares relatively favorably to the effects of psychotherapy for emotional problems. 1 The content of each session of the 10 sessions of Doing It Now is specified below. The sessions are designed to include persons who have been prescreened for psychopathology and do not have MMPI scores higher than 2.5 SD (t = 75) on any of the major clinical scales or the MacAndrew scale (except the F and K scales). The rationale for these selection criteria should be clear. We do not want our sessions to tum into a group therapy of persons with Axis I or Axis IT diagnoses. The presence of such people might also damage the ability of other clients to relate freely with each other and the group therapist. Oients with additional psychopathology are referred to individual therapy and are not treated in group context. Each session of Doing It Now runs about 80 to 90 minutes, including a 10-minute break. Typically, such sessions are held outside of the collegelip. an additional study conducted with 23 students, 10 sessions of brief psychodynamic



psyChotherapy (N = 15) had an effect size of .21 for the variable of change in procrastination scores. While this effect is significantly greater than 0, it is not especially high and suggests that psychodynamic psychotherapy, at least in its brief form, is relatively ineffective in eliminating procrastination. Obviously, more work is warranted in this area before this conclusion can be supported with stronger evidence. Regardless, it fits our clinical observations that general approaches to psychotherapy fail to have a specific effect on procrastination and that more dedicated treatments are necessary.



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counseling center, to help destigmatize their content and to encourage attendance. Throughout the sessions, the tone we attempt to set is one of lighthearted yet respectful concern on the part of the counselors or therapists for the problems that procrastinating students face. We prefer to work as a coeducational team, since it is less stressful and tiring for two therapists to work together, as is the case in many therapy groups. However, there is no reason that a single therapist cannot complete the sessions, or that each group must be led by persons of both genders. It is important that each session involve a homework component, since completion of the homework assignment is an integral part of treatment. Since there may be frequent between-session phone calls regarding these homework assignments, cotherapists can reduce the burden on each other and help prevent therapist ''burnout.'' Session 1 begins by having students complete an objective measure of procrastination, such as the Aitken Procrastination Inventory, or the Adult Inventory of Procrastination, both of which were discussed in Chapter 3. Students then score their own responses to the procrastination inventory, but are encouraged to keep these responses private. There may be a tendency for some unconscientious procrastinators to brag about who has the highest scores, relishing in their elevated status as the most dysfunctional among their peers. Our intent is to avoid this type of interstudent competition, since it fosters a noncooperativeness and a flippant attitude that may be disruptive at later times during the lO-week program. Following this, a 20- to 3~-minute overview is presented by the cotherapists, illuminating common aspects of procrastination. These include discussion of two major reasons people procrastinate: overanxiety or fear, and low conscientiousness. Students are then asked to pick one behavior that they procrastinate and discuss it in a group format, usually with no more than three or four other students. After a break, students reassemble to discuss the importance of self-monitoring of behavior. Students then agree to monitor a specific behavior that they have discussed in group with others, such as putting off returning library books, studying, or paying income taxes. The instructions are simply for them to note each indication of the number of times they actually are aware of putting the behavior off. Session 2 opens with a brief dialogue by the therapists stating that they b~lieve that on the basis of their previous experience, most students will not have completed their homework assignments. Students are usually astounded to hear this, especially those who fit this prophecy. In our experience, less than half of persons complete the homework assignment and there may be quite a bit of shame regarding this incompletion. To cope with this shame, a general concept from Alderian Therapy (Manaster &



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Corsini, 1982) is introduced. There is no shame associated with failing to complete a homework task. However, no excuses will be accepted for such failure. The therapists reiterate that this will be the general philosophy for the remainder of the course: "No excuses. No BS!" Students who have completed homework assignments are asked to share their results. The therapists next discuss the role of dysfunctional cognitions associated with procrastination. Numerous examples are presented. Following a brief break, students return to discuss specific dysfunctional cognitions that interfere with their lives. The homework assignment involves students monitoring their procrastination cognitions by having them simply list 10 or more of them during the following week. Session 3 begins with a further discussion of dysfunctional cognitions. Students are given a series of vignettes regarding people who do not complete tasks in a efficacious manner. Students are then divided into groups and are asked to identify potential cognitions that the subjects of the vignettes might hold and are asked to speculate on how these cognitions might hypothetically interfere with the development of completing tasks. After a break, students are instructed in the rudiments of relaxation training, actually participating in group practice of relaxing. Students are also instructed in how to rate their anxiety on a Likert-type scale, and are given an appropriate handout for this self-rating. This week's homework assignment involves students being instructed to record when they are anxious about completing tasks and subsequently to rate each incident of anxiety for severity on a Likert-type scale. Session 4 begins with the sharing of homework-assignment results and additional in-class training in relaxation methods. For homework, students are asked to practice relaxation training at least once a day during the next week. Mer a break, students role play a number of vignettes regarding the use of relaxation for stressful tasks. Enthusiasm in this session is usually quite high and students typically depart feeling that they have mastered a very practical skill. Session 5 opens with a brief sharing of how students have practicedand occasionally used-relaxation training. During this session, students are introduced to the idea that much of their procrastination is a response to anxiety-provoking situations, specifically situations where people feel they do not have any self-efficacy,a psychological term obviously meaningful to readers of this book, but one which is discussed for students in terms of "self-confidence." Graphic illustrations are shown to illustrate that anxiety produces avoidance, which produces further anxiety. Mer a break students are introduced to the concept that procrastination may also be related to overconfidence about being able to complete a task in a timely



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fashion. A few brief exercises are completed regarding the estimation of intervals of time. The homework assignment involves having students estimate how long it will take them to complete a specific task and then actually recording how long it takes them to complete the task, in addition to continuing to practice relaxation training. Session 6 opens with a sharing of homework results from the previous week's assignment. Usually, students are astounded to find that their peers-like themselves-have grossly underestimated the time it took to complete academic assignments. A general rule is then introduced: Budget 100% more time for a task than you think it will actually take! The therapists discuss the implications of this rule and students offer practical situations in which they can apply it. After a break, students return to plan activities for the next week. Individually, they identify some imminent tasks needing completion and then estimate the time it may take to complete these tasks. They are next instructed to double this time interval and to actually complete the tasks the following week. Session 7 begins with students sharing the results of the previous week's homework. They next discuss how irrational cognitions change their alteration of accurate time estimates. At this point, therapists illustrate how irrational cognitions can cause a person to decrease the time believed essential to completing a task or cause th~ person simply to avoid thinking about a task altogether. Numerous illustrations are presented and examples from the students' lives are solicited. After a break, the proposition that irrational cognitions may cause a person to avoid thinking about the details of a project is presented. In addition, the tendency of procrastinators and anxious people to perseverate on portions of a task that they feel they can complete is presented. Students then individually name a behavior that they are procrastinating and break down the goal into constituent parts, estimating the time to complete each part. The homework assignment involves completing the task examined in class. Session 8 begins by students discussing the impediments to completing their tasks in a timely fashion. Usually, some common themes occur (e.g., disturbances from roommates, leisure wishes, daily hassles, "forgetting," and demands from parents or work). In each case students are reminded that if they had budgeted sufficient time for the tasks, then these problems would be easily surmountable. After a break, students are asked to highlight on a worksheet the three events that they postpone the most in life and to construct a behavioral plan that highlights the parts involved in each. Session 9 opens in the now customary fashion by having students share their homework results. Typically, students are able to complete



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about 50% of their assigned projects and usually during this group there is a sense of despair when they realize that there are only two sessions left and the procrastination is not "cured." At this point, the counselors reiterate that success against procrastination is a habit and that all habits take time to solve. Students are then asked to identify impediments to reducing procrastination and to plan an active strategy helpful in combating these impediments. After a break, students outline long-term goals for the next 3 months and identify impediments, time needs, and milestones similar to Session 7. There is no homework for this session, but students are encouraged to think about what they have learned in the course. Session 10 involves a "wrap-up" of the previous weeks and a sharing session regarding the tasks that students realistically believe that they will complete during the next 3 months. Material from the previous sessions is briefly repeated and students are encouraged to present testimonials regarding the changes that they have made in their lives and are planning to make. Students are also encouraged to contact each other for support at the end of a specific period. Follow-up: No formal booster sessions have been implemented to date. However, at 3-,6-, and 12-month intervals, students are readministered the procrastination inventory presented earlier. At 3 months the treatment effect, compared with wait-listed persons, was .52, and it was essentially the same at 6 months (.44). At a 12-month period it actually improved slightly, to .51, for reasons that are not clear. We believe that booster sessions would assist clients in preserving therapeutic gains and might actually help them to continue to improve even in the absence of treatment.



INDMDUAL THERAPY FOR PROCRASTINATION Data on 31 self-referred procrastinators indicate a comparable effect size of .64 for persons in individual therapy that followed the 10-session cognitive-behavioral change model of Doing It Now discussed previously. The differences between effect size of persons in group therapy and individual therapy were not significant, nor were there significant differences in the number of students who dropped out of individual therapy as compared to group therapy. Presently, we do not have data on the longterm effects of individual therapy compared with group treatment. However, we might expect individual treatment to display a bit more gradual reduction or erosion of gains, inasmuch as clients in this form of treatment do not have the close peer support and camaraderie that seems helpful in preserving behavioral change regarding task completion. From an efficiency viewpoint, group therapy is also preferable, and for typical cases of



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student procrastination there is probably little justification for individual treatment. Individual therapy is probably indicated, however, whenever students have a concurrent DSM-III-R Axis I or Axis IT disorders. Obviously, the clinician will choose to depart from the structured format and treat whatever disorder is at hand. As presented, our data suggest that generic psychodynamic psychotherapy has a slight treatment effect on procrastination, but that this is probably not enough for effective treatment. In the next chapter we discuss individual therapy in more detail, and although the discussion largely concerns adults, it is relevant to students as well.



A TWO-SESSION INTERVENTION We have also experimented with a very brief, abridged version of the Doing It Now treatment for group intervention. This method involved two 80- to 90-minute workshops that can be presented at the start of an academic year or at the start of the second semester. The workshops are appropriate for a much larger audience, perhaps upwards of 40 people, and also may be used preventatively for high-risk students (such as returniilg older students who may not be sure of their ability to complete tasks on time, or students from disenfranchised backgrounds). The abridged method of Doing It Now dispenses with group exercises and a substantial portion of the personal sharing involved in the longer modality. Students complete a procrastination inventory during the first session and score it. They then receive a lecture about two different types of procrastination-anxious avoidance and low conscientiousness. The first session closes with students receiving a handout and being lectured on cognitions that foster anxiety or nonconscientiousness. There is no break in this lecture. Students are then instructed to go home and identify some of the dysfunctional cognitions that influence their procrastination. The second meeting begins with a brief sharing of some of the dysfunctional cognitions that students have identified during the previous week. Students are then taught methods of challenging the cognitions for reasonableness and accuracy. Students break up into groups and participate in helping each other criticize one another's procrastinating cognitions. This abridged version of Doing It Now has been tried with 106 students and has an effect size of .32, which is not significantly different from the nonspecific effect found in psychotherapy, or the effect found in a traditional study-skills workshop of 10 sessions. It is, however, much more economical, in that it only requires approximately 3 hours of treatment



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instead of approximately 15 hours. Furthermore, because the interventions are brief, nonthreatening, and not likely to exacerbate anyone's level of psychopathology, prescreening of participants for prior mental-health problems is generally not required. At this time, additional work continues on evaluating the efficacy of both the shorter and full versions of Doing It Now, as well as experimenting with specific techniques designed to increase the effect size of treatment.



CHAPTER



10



TREATING ADULT AND ATYPICAL PROCRASTINATION



In Chapter 9 we presented a theory-based, structured therapeutic program aimed at reducing procrastination. This time-limited program was primarily relevant to treatment of procrastinating college students. The premises regarding the etiologies of procrastination that we introduce in this book were used to shape the content of those interventions. Specifically, we stated that procrastination is most typically caused by two distinct and apparently independent etiologies: (1) neurotic overarousal, which causes task avoidance because of anxiousness or fear associated with undertaking specific projects or class assignments; and (2) a lack of conscientiousness associated with not giving sufficient forethought to deadlines, underarousal regarding upcoming goals, and possibly also impulsiveness. We also presented some preliminary outcome data suggesting that the brief interventions highlighted in the preceding chapter had some efficacy over and above an attention-placebo treatment group, traditional psychotherapy, or a simple study-skills training group. The contention of the present chapter is that adult procrastination may have a different etiology than that typically found in students exhibiting apparently similar behavior. The differences between typical student pr0crastination and other forms highlighted in this chapter warrant a distinctive, often broader treatment strategy, encompassing a number of additional therapeutic modalities. Whereas procrastination in college students is treated primarily with behavioral and cognitive methods, in this chapter we will discuss the use of other therapeutic modalities, including psychodynamic psychotherapy. In discussing procrastination occurring in adults, nonstudents, and 211



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also in cases of student procrastination that do not fit into the model presented in Chapter 9, we have even less outcome data than the unsatisfactory amount available for the treatment of college-student procrastination. Essentially, we have only clinical records and case histories to delineate factors associated with treatment success and failure. Until systematic, empirical studies are conducted, limited and unscientific clinical accounts are the best we can offer. The empirically oriented psychologist is certainly apt to feel disappointment, if not complete skepticism, at some of our statements and suggestions. Where we do not have data, we will advocate that interventions be based on well-established psychological theory, inasmuch as possible. As we have stated throughout this volume, serious research is needed regarding the efficacy of various treatment strategies for procrastination. We hope this chapter will not only be useful for clinicians, but also be a heuristic to suggest areas where thorough outcome research is needed.



RELEVANT THEORETICAL ORIENTATION One problem with adult procrastination is determining which set of theories is the most pertinent to apply. With the student procrastinator, our theoretical options were generally limited to interventions relevant to the domains of behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, and social-learning therapies. With adult procrastinators, our choices are forced to be much broader, drawing on psychodynamic constructs and interventions, as well as methodologies that are generally more comfortable for empirically oriented therapists. "TYPICAL" AND '~CAL" ADULT PROCRASTINATION: THE CRITICAL DIsTINCTION



In Chapter 9 we differentiated between what we term "typical" and "atypical" procrastination. We define typical procrastination as procrastination that fits into the patterns of neurotic avoidance (overarousal) and! or lack of conscientiousness (underarousal). (It should be recalled that it is possible for persons to fit into both patterns at the same time.) We believe that this combination of apparently independent causes accounts for the majority of clients seen in student-counseling centers. When clear patterns of either or both of these behavioral syndromes emerge, the range of treatment strategies outlined in the previous chapter are also appropriate for adults, despite their status as nonstudents. Our clinical experience suggests that cognitive-behavioral and behav-



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ioral interventions similar to those advocated in the previous chapter are probably the treatment of choice and can be applied parsimoniously, perhaps in as few as 10 sessions, and almost always in under 25 hours of psychotherapy. This does not mean that we can "cure" all instances of procrastination in 25 or fewer sessions. Instead, there seems little value in extending treatment with this particular modality if the client's symptoms have not shown some improvement. As in the case of student procrastinators, treatment for nonstudents should incorporate suitable interventions for the target symptoms of anxiety and/or lack of conscientiousness. In other words, anxious task avoiders should receive treatment to reduce their anxiety. Unconscientious, impulsive persons should receive treatment to modify the patterns of their own particularly dysfunctional behaviors. Fortunately, there is an abundance of outstanding literature available on the behavioral and cognitive-behavioral treatment of anxiety, which will not be repeated here (i.e., Barlow, 1992). It is assumed that the clinician who treats adult procrastinators has familiarity and mastery of the basic techniques appropriate for the behavioral and cognitive-behavioral treatment of anxiety disorders, methods which are often incorporated into the treatment of procrastination. The clinician who treats the anxious adult procrastinator should be comfortable performing systematic desensitization, flooding, cognitive-behavior modification, successive approximation, and other commonly applied operant techniques. All of these interventions are designed to reduce the overarousing anxiety that is common with a specific subtype of procrastinators, and in our experience each of these techniques has been used successfully on many occasions with both college students and adults. However, lack of conscientiousness seems to be a much more common route toward procrastination with adult populations, at least with those who have sought treatment with us. One reason may be that the college environment has more immediately punitive consequences for task failure, encouraging anxious procrastinators to be overrepresented in the college-age group. In addition, the anxiety associated with task avoidance extinguishes itself by the time persons move from college age into young adulthood. In any case, "disconscientiousness," as we sometimes wish to call it, seems to categorize many more adults who seek treatment for chronic procrastination. As we have noted in the previous chapter, behaviors related to disconscientiousness include impulsiveness, antiauthoritarianism, and, we believe, cortical underarousal, apparently one involving a neural system independent of the limbic overarousal observed in anxious procrastinators. We further hypothesize that such persons are not able to delay gratification (d. Ferrari & Emmons, 1994), so that beginning a task at



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a time closer to its deadline reduces the time spent without reward. Furthermore, such persons frequently are not sufficiently aroused by cues in their environment, so they do not begin a task at the optimal time to guarantee the maximal possibility of completion. Unfortunately, conscientiousness and its behavioral antithesis characterized by the lack of this trait, has only recently emerged as a factor of serious personality research (Costa & McCrae, 1989; Costa, McCrae, & Dye, 1991). There are no controlled studies at this time that demonstrate empirically valid methods of increasing this trait. Consequently, our treatment goals for this group of clients are less theoretically based than with anxiety-related procrastination. In the absence of good literature, again, we have to rely on clinical interventions based substantially on observations. The following case study highlights the manner in which a clinical formulation stressing the causes of chronic "typical" procrastination is important in adult clients. It illustrates the manner in which the therapist used information regarding the client's conscientiousness and anxiety to establish a treatment plan that was successful. Suzanne was a 43-year-old consultant to the fashion industry, who contacted one of the authors after reading about our work in a popular publication. Suzanne stated that, ?JJ. my life I've had problems getting things done. It's not that I'm scattered or not motivated. I just don't get things done in time .... It's getting worse now that I'm working for myself. In college I started going to the counseling center to get some help but I was smart enough that I could wait until the last minute and not get in trouble. Now, every time I postpone something it costs me money .... I'm desperate. If I don't do something quick my business will fold." In other areas of her life Suzanne had a pattern of "bohemian casualness" that bordered on blatant disregard for the feelings of others. For example, she would promise a friend that she would stop by her house, and think nothing of showing up 4 or 5 hours later. She loved to live "on the spur of the moment," stating that the only people who have to make plans in life are "those who don't trust fate." She never paid her bills on time and considered social obligations "merely tentative until something better comes along." Prior to treatment, Suzanne was administered an MMPI and the NEO-PI [N (neurotic) E (extrovert) 0 (open to experience)-PI (personality inventory)] (Costa & McCrae, 1989). The latter is a well-established instrument which measures conscientiousness and neuroticism directly. Suzanne's MMPI scores indicated mild depreSSion and anxiety, with a possible tendency toward substance abuse. However, her NEOPI scores showed clear evidence of a lack of conscientiousness and also



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of a high level of trait neuroticism. Suzanne fit into both of the patterns of "typical" procrastinators in that she was both unconscientious and also anxiously avoidant. Suzanne was treated with 21 sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which attempted to change her lack of conscientiousness and increase her empathy for others. She was also taught relaxation techniques and methods of challenging anxiety-provoking cognitions. Several sessions were spent on encouraging her to develop self-reward strategies for achieving incremental goals. Finally, Suzanne's tendency to use procrastination as an excuse for failure (i.e., self-handicapping) was challenged and she learned not to make excuses for her avoidance behaviors. The results were a decrease in her Adult Inventory of Procrastination (see Chapter 3) score from 2.3 SD above the mean to 1.6 SD above the mean. Although she noted that she still has a tendency to want to put things off, she stated that now she has been more able to cope with this deficit. "1'11 tell you, I kick myself in the butt each time so that I don't do it." Suzanne's procrastination is sufficiently under control so that she has encountered fewer work-related problems. Mostly, the behavioral problems that she now has involve her personal life, "mostly getting my oil changed in my car and getting the library books back on time." While we would not claim that this client has been "cured" of her tendencies to procrastinate, both empirical testing and the client's own self-reports suggest that she has obtained substantial symptoms reduction.



Similar to the treatment of students who are extremely unconscientious, our general strategy with adults who demonstrate this type of procrastination is multifocal. It involves some of the following components: 1) increasing environmental cues regarding upcoming deadlines; 2) decreasing cognitions that foster impulsiveness and underestimation of task demands; and 3) increasing self-rewards associated with completing tasks. As with college students, treatment is not designed to increase anxiety per se. Threats, punishment, cajoling, and other "lay" methods work about as well when the therapist applies them as they do for the boss, spouse, or friend. Instead, the strategy is to increase awareness of aspects of the task that demand attention, primarily through cognitive-behavioral means, or by instructing the client in methods of self-reward and behavioral management.



GROUP TREATMENT Within group therapy, treatment of "typical" adult procrastinators is no different then that for college students. However, we have been ineffec-



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tive in treating adult procrastinators in a group-therapy format. The attrition rates of clients are simply too high, and unlike students, who are usually very motivated to overcome their procrastination due to poor grades, adult clients are very likely to simply skip important group sessions. In the experiences we have had with group treatment of procrastinators, at least 80% of participants (out of 40 treated in four different groups) missed 3 or more meetings out of 12 sessions. More than 50% of subjects missed half the sessions. Obviously, such attendance makes it impossible to conduct meaningful group work. With this in mind, we now advocate that treatment of adult "typical" procrastination proceed primarily within the context of individual therapy. In this type of modality, missed sessions are not as critical, since they can be rescheduled and the special attention afforded to individuals in one-toone therapy often seems helpful in maintaining clients' motivations. Exceptions, such as family treatment of procrastination, or group treatment for dissertation procrastination will be detailed next.



THE LENGTH OF TREATMENT FOR "TYPICAL" ADULT PROCRASTINATION A pertinent question that we are frequently asked is "How long will therapy for adult procrastinators take?" In these times of managed care, brief therapy, and time-limited mental-health services, such a question is critical. As yet, there are no controlled studies of short- versus long-term procrastination treatment. Therefore, we are not able to say with any empirical coimdence how long treatment should take. Our own experience suggests that the length of time procrastinators must remain in treatment before they obtain substantial symptom remission depends on a host of factors, as it does for any clinical condition. These factors include the client's motivation, other personal issues and life stressors, social supports, and concurrent psychopathology which might be present. However, as stated earlier, we believe that most cases of "typical" procrastination treatment that are uncomplicated by any other mental health or psychiatric concerns can be substantially improved in between 12 and 25 sessions of individual cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, with possibility of benefit diminishing rapidly after 25 sessions. Because of the apparent high rate of relapse, we recommend that at least one-fourth of the sessions be devoted to booster sessions scheduled at progressively longer intervals. Howeve~ controlled studies are needed to determine the optimal frequency of these sessions. Note that these session numbers are higher than the 10 sessions



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suggested for group treatment of students. One reason for this disparity involves the different time allocations in individual versus group treatment. Typically, individual psychotherapy sessions run 45-50 minutes, once a week. Group sessions run about 80 minutes. A second reason is that for adult procrastinators, whose mean ages are usually higher than those of students, there may be a much longer history of procrastination. The behavior is more ingrained, less dystonic, and therefore the behavior may require longer treatment to cause substantial modification.



CASE STUDY: A TREATMENT PLAN FOR TYPICAL ADULT PROCRASTINATION The following case study is another example of how the treatment of procrastination in adults may be quite similar to that of college students. The client, Harvey, was a 37-year-old systems analyst who contacted one of the coauthors following a radio show regarding psychological aspects of procrastination. Shortly afterward, his attorney also contacted the author. Harvey had failed to pay income taxes for 4 years and also failed to get his car insured in a timely manner, violating state law. He was in serious legal trouble, having run afoul of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He also had his license to drive revoked due to noncompliance with his state's insurance regulations. Harvey was given psychological testing to rule out major forms of psychopathology and was also referred to a physician for a comprehensive physical. No physical abnormalities were present and the physician referred Harvey back to the psychologists for further testing and treatment. Psychological testing indicated that Harvey was very anxious and avoidant, but he did not meet diagnostic criteria for any specific psychiatric disorder. The Adult Inventory of Procrastination was also administered and indicated that Harvey scored two standard deviations from the adult mean in his procrastinating behavior. A NEO-PI showed that Harvey was very neurotic, but also quite conscientious. During the first interview, the therapist determined that Harvey demonstrated a pattern of avoiding tasks, but only doing so when a deadline was imminent. Harvey's anxiety, which normally was manageable, rose quite rapidly, even extraordinarily, when a deadline was near. At these times his anxiety became almost phobic in its intensity, making him think that he was "going crazy." Consequently, Harvey was forced to avoid any tasks with rigid deadlines that he could not control. Among the tasks that Harvey classified in this category were taxes-hence, his problems with the IRS. Although Harvey's history had relevant psychodynamic aspects,



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such as his need to control the situation and the overcontrol his father had on his family, the treating psychologist categorized Harvey's procrastination as "typical" and attempted to treat the overwhelming contributing symptom of anxiety. Harvey was taught relaxation therapy. Some of his anxiety regarding upcoming tasks was extinguished using classical methods of systematic desensitization. This desensitization/extinction process took eight sessions. The next four sessions involved Harvey learning to challenge cognitions that caused him to increase avoidance behavior. Two "wrap-up" sessions concluded the therapy, and two booster sessions were administered at 6-month intervals. Harvey was able to work out his problems with the IRS and with the state motor vehicle agency. He has had no problems paying taxes since treatment, though he does note that, "Unless I kick myself in the rear I will get back into that old avoidance trap." He still practices relaxation training daily and has found his work performance improving in a number of areas.



INTEGRATING THE TREATMENT OF TYPICAL PROCRASTINATION INTO GENERAL PSYCHOTHERAPY Often, it will become apparent to the clinician that procrastination is a relevant problem only after the client has been in treatment for some time and a number of other therapeutic issues are present in the client-therapist interaction. Frequently psychotherapy will continue after the problem of procrastination is resolved, with a list of other difficulties being uncovered and deemed worthy of attention by both the therapist and the client. For example, while the treatment of procrastination is ongoing, clients may identify interpersonal or marital difficulties as affecting them and continue to desire additional therapeutic intervention. The attention to other therapeutic needs is obviously appropriate, ethical, and simply good clinical practice as long as the client's initial gains regarding procrastination are not allowed to fade. Therapists who practice a psychodynamic framework frequently shift modalities into a more insight-oriented treatment after initial problems regarding procrastination are solved. When such therapists engage in this type of shift following a successful treatment for procrastination, they must be prepared to "work behaviorally" again when the need arises regarding the client's tendency to procrastinate. In our clinical experience, the psychodynamic approaches to treatment of "typical" procrastination are usually not warranted. Psychological theory indicates a better rationale for cognitive-behavioral and behavioral



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interventions. Psychodynamic therapy does have its place in the treatment of procrastination, but not in our experience for cases that are related to anxiety or a lack of conscientiousness. In order to reduce problems associated with transference and shifting therapeutic roles, many people who work psychodynamically prefer to refer typical procrastinators to more cognitive-behavioral therapists. We also believe that when treatment is deemed appropriate and timely by the therapist, procrastination should be the major focus of treatment. In other words, as one client put it, "It's a good idea just to concentrate all of my energies on this one area." Too often, clients' treatment interventions are nebulous, too all-encompassing, too diffuse. For the procrastinator, treatment does not seem to work unless it is specific and highly focused. Therefore, we argue that procrastination should only be treated when the client has sufficient time and resources to devote to a successful therapy course, and when there are no more immediate mental-health problems that warrant prior intervention. This, obviously, involves careful psychological screening, a topic we shall return to later.



PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY AND PROCRASTINATION? Harvey's case is characteristic of typical procrastination because it involves anxiety that interferes with the capacity to complete tasks in an orderly and timely fashion. One question we are often asked involves the use of medications. The reasoning, usually voiced by psychiatrists, is simple: If a substantial portion of procrastination is due to anxiety, wouldn't use of an anxiolytic undercut the anxiety sufficiently so that "talk" therapies would no longer be necessary? Although this approach sounds as if it might produce a plausible treatment in theory, it has not been our clinical experience that procrastination is helped by anxiolytic drugs. In fact, these drugs usually make the client worse, probably by decreasing anxiety too much and fostering in the client an "I couldn't care less" attitude. There are, however, a few exceptions. Persons who are avoidant and in a chronic state of emotional arousal may benefit from acute-anxiety reduction. An example was the student Jean in Chapter 9. However, our experience suggests that drugs rarely have a helpful impact on decision-related avoidance-. They may help persons with discrete task-avoidance behaviors, such as fears of confronting inappropriate social behavior of others. They seem to do little for persons who "just don't get around" to paying their taxes or getting their license plates renewed. Longer term maintenance on anxiolytics is probably even more con-



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traindicated for the treatment of procrastination, inasmuch as benzodiazepines are associated with increased behavioral disinhibition (Leonard, 1992), and therefore may make procrastination much worse. We hypothesize that benzodiazepines may be associated with an increase in procrastination by controlling too much anxiety, including that necessary to signal an upcoming deadline that requires action. Needless to say, a lack of conscientiousness and impulsiveness may also be associated with abuse potential for prescription drugs. One exception to skepticism regarding antianxiety agents may be the novel non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic buspirone, a partial serotonergic agonist with limited euphoriant, disinhibitory, and muscle-relaxing properties (Taylor, 1988). Buspirone appears to have no abuse potential. One client that we tested (but did not treat) reduced procrastination by one-half a standard deviation without psychotherapy while on the standard dosage of 10-mg buspirone three times a day. Buspirone also has antidepressant effects, which may have contributed to this apparent treatment improvement, although the nonspecific (i.e., placebo) effects must also be considered. Presently there are a number of second-generation benzodiazepines in development and testing phases (Hindmarch, Beaumont, Brandon, & Leonard, 1990). These drugs differ from the commonly known first generation drugs of this class in their selective-receptor subsensitivity. If animal models are a prediction of human psychopharmacological effects, these new drugs appear to produce anxiolysis without producing euphoria, although the degree of their selectivity and specificity is still questionable. These new and experimental drugs may hold some promise for treating avoidant procrastination, although again, much empirical work is needed to ascertain their efficacy in this domain. Another question concerns the use of medication for depression and whether pharmacological treatment of depression eliminates or affects procrastination. This question is especially relevant when the procrastitJ.ating behavior seems to be related primarily to an onset of depressive symptoms. Obviously, treatment of depression almost always takes precedence over the treatment of procrastination. Depression is potentially life threatening. Procrastination is only life threatening when people have a serious undiagnosed or diagnosed medical disorder for which they postpone treatment. One reason we strongly advocate adequate psychological testing of persons entering treatment with a symptom of "procrastination" is that many of these people may be depressed and could benefit from medication and specific cognitive-behavioral techniques. However, there is no evidence that procrastination without the absence of depressive symptoms is enhanced by use of antidepressants, at least the common tricyclics



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(Le., nortriptyline, amitriptyline, imipramine, etc.). We do not have enough experience with the newer antidepressants (e.g., fluoxetine, paroxetine, and sertriline), or even with the classic monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors such as phenelzine to note whether they are of value in treating procrastination. MAO inhibitors ostensibly have a profile suggesting potential use with unconscientiousness procrastination, inasmuch as they may reduce impulsive behaviors occasionally accompanying depression (Leonard & Spencer, 1990). Again, more data generated from wellcontrolled studies is needed.



ASSESSMENT: THE NEED FOR A FULL HISTORY Throughout this chapter we have discussed the necessity for a careful psychological assessment. We realize that a majority of mental health clinicians do not routinely include psychological testing in their treatment planning. This includes psychologists, as well as other mental health personnel, and perhaps this trend has been increased by the reluctance of third-party payers to reimburse appropriate psychological testing. However, as was the case with students who seek treatment for this behavior, psychological testing with objective measures is almost always indicated before treatment for procrastination begins. In fact, procrastination in the nonstudent adult is even more worthy of the effort involved in psychological assessment because it is potentially more problematic and of greater concern than it is with students. This is true for two reasons. First, if this behavior suddenly occurs without any substantial previous history, the clinician should be concerned about other, more serious psychiatric or physical diagnoses causing the procrastinating behavior. Depression, obviously, is a prototypical cause for concern. Procrastination is a relatively stable trait and its sudden emergence in the otherwise well-functioning adult suggests the potential existence of other, perhaps more serious disorders, including physical disorders. Second, if the trait has been long-standing and somewhat stable, then the procrastinator apparently has been coping with it by him- or herself relatively successfully for quite some time. Inevitably, he or she had learned a number of dysfunctional behaviors to compensate for this lack of punctuality and treatment may be much more difficult than if it were begun with a young person. For example, a procrastinator may have learned how to manage life relatively well by avoiding responsibility for lateness by shifting the blame on others. He or she may also be adept at feigning or actually becoming ill when deadlines approach. The number of



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dysfunctional coping strategies employed by procrastinators is seemingly endless and the longer the behavior has been present, the more the likelihood that these behaviors will themselves complicate treatment. Past history is usually not on the therapist's side when procrastination occurs in adults, and it is likely that the client will have reached a tenuous coexistence with his or her work, family, and friends regarding punctuality. There is also the concern that a sudden change in the ability to complete tasks in a punctual manner may be related to organic factors or psychiatric syndromes. This is especially possible regarding syndromes that present with a rapid manifestation of symptoms, such as acute depression or mania. Occasionally, persons with dementia will present to a mental health professional complaining of an inability to make decisions, or a tendency to put off actions that they once found easy to perform Gohnson & McCown, 1995). The practitioner who treats these "organic" problems as "psychological" risks a serious and potentially disastrous misdiagnosisl that may very well be fatal. Therefore, we argue that great care needs to be taken when assessing procrastination, especially in adults. When diagnosis is in doubt, such as in the case of a client with an uncertain history or of one who is not sufficiently articulate, the practitioner does well to seek a referral for the "rule out" of organic factors with a physician who is amenable to working with the mental-health therapist. The following case study illustrates why a careful history is necessary to assess a variety of potential causes of procrastination: Robert, a 35-year-old advertising consultant, presented to a therapist following his boss's concerns with his inability to finish projects in a timely fashion. Robert had been employed with this particular advertising agency for 6 years. His performance had always been outstanding. However, during the last 3 months he had begun missing many important deadlines, for no good reason. He denied a previous history of procrastination or of any health problems and had no history of other psychiatric or psychological problems. The clinician gave Robert an MMPI, but the symptom pattern revealed simply a cluster of vague medical problems and mild-tomoderate distress over them. However, the clinician was very concerned about the client's sudden onset of symptoms in a previously well-functioning person. She suspected that this sudden onset of lIn our experience, the reverse type of misdiagnosis also occurs all too frequently. A chronic procrastinator, a person with a clear longtime pattern of major task avoidance, will seek a consultation with a general practitioner, physician, or psychiatrist who will diagnose him or her as being depressed. Pharmacological treatment-often fluoxetine, though occasionally a tricyclic antidepressant-will be tried, but to no avail. Usually the patient is referred for psychoanalytic treatment at this point, an expensive and usually inappropriate treatment.



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symptoms suggested an underlying physical problem. A neurological examination and accompanying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies revealed a large meningioma, a nonmalignant tumor of the material that covers the brain, causing pressure on the patient's frontal lobes. This noncancerous tumor was successfully removed surgically and the patient made a satisfactory recovery. His procrastination subsequently abated several months after the tumor was excised. He is now back at his job and doing quite well at work, although subsequent neuropsychological testing indicates some residual memory deficits.



Rapid onset of procrastination may also be related to a more serious psychopathology. While this is true in college students, our clinical impression is that it is even more likely in adults. Therefore, probably the most important question in assessing procrastination is to determine its history and longevity. A sudden inability to get tasks completed in a punctual manner without any previous history of such problems in adult nonstudents is generally of more concern. The following case illustrates the necessity of persons treating procrastination to have competent clinical skills and to be prepared to employ traditional psychological testing whenever they think necessary to rule out more serious problems. Genna, a 27-year-old nurse specializing in managed-care review, consulted with a psychologist regarding her increasing anxiety regarding completion of tasks at work. She had no previous history of psychological problems and a recent medical workup revealed nothing contributory to her mental status. However, a detailed inquiry by an experienced clinician indicated that Genna had paranoid feelings about her present supervisor and feared that if she finished any task at work her supervisor would criticize her harshly. This was true despite a previous satisfactory history with the supervisor and no work-related problems. However, Genna had few close friends and a history of abrupt changes of telephone number and address. More extensive psychological testing was suggested, and results of this testing showed clear evidence of paranoid schizophrenia. Appropriate treatment, including psychotherapy and a small dose of antipsychotic medication, reduced the symptoms until they were manageable and provided minimal interference with the client's life. At present the client continues to be involved in ongoing treatment and other areas of her life are starting to become more satisfactory. Naturally, therapy did not go completely smoothly, because the client had extreme difficulty in forming a treatment alliance and trusting her therapist. However, slow progress has been continued, with the client working hard to resolve personality problems that apparently had been undiagnosed until her mental health consultation regarding her work problems.



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STRESS AND PROCRASTINATION: AN OFTEN OVERLOOKED LINK Our clinical work also suggests that a potential cause of procrastination in persons without a previous history of this behavior may be a rapid change in life-stress levels. As discussed in Chapter 7, stress may playa causal role in procrastination. People who are under atypical stress levels may tend to put things off, and if they have never encountered substantial personal stresses before, this behavior may appear quite novel and distressing. One effective treatment for this type of procrastination, obviously, is to reduce the level of life stressors inasmuch as possible. In the current economic climate of corporate North America and Europe, where economic downsizing is making persons fortunate enough to have jobs work harder and longer hours, it may be impossible for the therapist to assist the client in removing the relevant stressors. In this case the therapist is forced to assist the client in whatever way he or she can in managing the stress and daily hassles that are becoming so endemic to modem life. Reduction in life stressors may also, and somewhat paradoxically, cause a tendency toward task incompletion. We note that some persons seem only to be able to perform punctually when experiencing high levels of stress. When this stress is reduced to what most of us would consider a more humane level, these persons find themselves unmotivated and cannot meet deadlines in a punctual manner. The following case study illustrates this behavior: Gerry was a 47-year-old attorney with "Type X' personality tendencies. Professionally, he was extraordinarily successful, though his frequent bouts with angina were beginning to interfere with his constant need to give himself fully to every task. On the advice of his cardiologist, Gerry attempted to reduce many of the stressors in his life. Naturally, he zealously pursued the recommended program of behavioral-stress management with the same intensity that he pursued other activities. On the surface he was quite successful in reducing his daily hassles, disruptions, and social stressors. However, he found that once he had less stress in his life he had "too much time" and, consequently, wasted excessive hours to the point where tasks were not completed in a timely fashion. His boss began to complain about his work. Because of this new problem in his life, Gerry consulted a psychologist. Behavioral treatment aimed at reducing the procrastination was instituted with excellent results. Gerry was taught when to look for certain Signals that a task needed completion and then to reward himself for completing each component portion. In this manner, Gerry was able to regulate his life in a much more effective manner and was able to remain punctual, despite the decreased daily stressors.



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TO PROCRASTINATION AND CONCURRENT SUBSTANCE ABUSE '~DDICTION"



Some people seem to need the satisfaction of completing a task at the last minute in order to become sufficiently motivated. Many of these persons will report a "high" or "rush" following task completion at the last minute (see Ferrari, 1992c). We suspect that what is occurring is an increased norepinephrine turnover associated with exhaustion and lack of sleep, perhaps with some release of endogenous opiates. Somewhat similar phenomena have been studied in animals quite intensely (Maie~ 1986) and are labeled "stress-induced analgesia." Recently, some researchers have also applied the concept of stress-induced analgesia to humans (e.g., McCown, Galina, Johnson, DeSimone, & Posa, 1993) and are exploring the manner in which people manipulate their environments to cause or heighten a stressor that for whatever reason is experienced as pleasurable. Others may prefer a more cognitive interpretation of the above phenomena involving the boosted or exaggerated sense of self-efficacy that comes from "beating it down to the wire." When a person is able to do something at the last minute that his or her peers usually require much longer to accomplish, the procrastinator often (in attribution terms) would augment his or her self-esteem (what laypersons call"an ego boost"). Regardless of whether causation is "physiological" or "psychological, " in some cases persons actually seem to become addicted to the cycle of procrastination: frantic last-minute efforts, late task completion, and postcompletion relief. Sometimes the use of alcohol or other drugs complicates the clinical situation. During the 1970s it was not uncommon to find many professionals procrastinating work-related tasks, only to complete them while under the influence of amphetamines. During the 1980s the same pattern was repeated, only with cocaine. Indeed, the procrastination seemed to serve as an excuse for cocaine bingeing in otherwise non-drugusing adults, a phenomena we have labeled /lauto-mediated" substance abuse. A great many professionals became addicted to cocaine in this manner. During the 1990s alcohol has probably replaced cocaine as the complicating drug involved in the pattern of procrastination. Students and professionals will frequently postpone complex and difficult activities until the last minute and then, after frantic efforts involving extraordinary sleep deprivation and much personal stress, they will complete the task-but just barely. Following task completion, an intense period of "partying" involving disinhibitory behavior (e.g., drinking and sexual activities) may occur that would not occur in other circumstances. For example, in our clinical practice we have noted that some young



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attorneys attempting to become partners are often notorious procrastinators regarding completion of key legal briefs. Following two or three "all nighters" occurring just before the briefs are needed, the task is barely completed by deadline. (Some of our colleagues in mental health sciences also demonstrate this same pattern regarding submission of peer-reviewed grants!) Alcohol has a prominent role in this disinhibition and drinking binges can last many hours or days. Often they are accompanied by other drug use or more casual sex than the revelers would typically endorse. Naturally these reinforcers make this pattern of procrastination all the harder to treat successfully. The added bravado that occurs in people who believe that they are "smart enough to beat it to the wire" complicates any attempt to break these unproductive habits. As a result, many procrastinators develop concomitant substanceabuse problems. Chronic substance abuse further increases procrastination as part of a vicious cycle. In this situation, both procrastination and substance-abuse problems need treatment, a fact often overlooked by addiction counselors and substance-abuse specialists.



ATYPICAL PROCRASTINATION Atypical procrastination is defined as brief, episodic procrastination occurring in a person who has previously not had a history of this behavior when other potential causes for task delays (e.g., psychopathology) have been ruled out. The prototypic example is dissertation procrastination. In atypical procrastination one or two factors are almost always present. Usually a monumental task has been imposed on a person without appropriate guidelines or mechanisms for feedback to determine whether the behavioral steps are correct. Hence the procrastinator engages in the behavior first discussed by Silver and Sabini (1981)-namely, he or she "maintains the procrastinating field" and perseverates on portions of the tasks that he or she feels it is possible to perform satisfactorily. For example, in dissertation procrastination, the student may perform enormous and inappropriately large literature reviews, simply because this is something the student knows he or she can do well and probably has had several rewarded experiences performing. Or, the student may construct such a detailed outline that the actual writing of the dissertation never occurs. Second, the task usually has some prominent meaning in the person's life. Like a dissertation, it may be a rite of passage, whereby the student leaves the safe world of academia for the hostile world outside of the university. Although we are reticent to invoke the notion of a dynamic, unconscious thwarting of task completion for a major rite of passage, it



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seems very often that many persons when faced with a defining challenge are unconsciously unable to complete the necessary task. More psychoanalytic clinicians might wish to evoke unresolved childhood traumas as explanatory concepts, and despite the fact that these hypotheses are probably impossible to support with data, they often seem to fit the clients' clinical presentation (Summers, 1990). Dissertation procrastination, unlike other forms of procrastination, is actually more common among conscientious students. In unpublished data, we found a correlation between the amount of time to complete a dissertation and conscientiousness (as measured by the NEO-PI) of .21 (n = 126), P < .05. While this correlation is not particularly high, it is notable in that it goes against the direction found in typical procrastination where lack of conscientiousness correlates with higher procrastination scores. The task avoidance experienced by dissertation procrastinators is usually very upsetting for the persons involved because they do not have the substantial experience with uncompleted tasks that the typical procrastinator has. The usual personality style is one of conscientiousness, perhaps excessively so. Not being able to complete a task is very alarming and implies a loss of control. It is precisely for this reason that this behavior is so distressing to the procrastinator. A surprising number of previously high-functioning graduate students actually seek mental health intervention regarding their dissertation procrastination. Green (1981) has shown that dissertation procrastination can be treated in a group setting. Although we do not have any experience treating dissertation procrastination in a group setting, we have supervised students who were treated for it in individual psychotherapy. Seventeen of19 students were able to complete their dissertations with nondirective, supportive psychotherapy, involving 5 to 25 sessions. Interestingly, three of these dissertations won awards or professional accolades, indicating the degree of conscientiousness or perfectionism that dissertation procrastinators usually exhibit. The two students who did not complete their dissertations were both very unconscientious, as indicated by their scores on the NED-PI. In general, our approach for coping with this type of procrastination involves both cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic intervention. Cognitive interventions are used to challenge the perfectionistic tendencies of these individuals. Psychodynamic interpretations are offered for the symbolic meaning of completion of the task at hand and perhaps the fear of succeeding independently. These "clinical hypotheses" are presented gingerly and offered as tentative formulations. If the student does not endorse them, we do not force the issue. Some students seem particularly en-



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amored with psychodynamic explanations. Others, especially in the harder sciences, do not seem to be so attracted and such interpretations may simply distract the student from the task at hand. Clinical judgment is needed to ascertain the client's level of resistance toward interpretations. The sometimes-typical stance in psychoanalytic circles of waiting for the client to voice and then to accept an insight regarding the symbolic aspects of his or her procrastination is not supported by our clinical experience. Nor, in our opinion, should students who are experiencing dissertation procrastination be persuaded to enter time-consuming and emotionally draining self-explorational therapies until the dissertation is completed. PSYCHODYNAMIC TREATMENT FOR ATYPICAL PROCRASTINATION



Regardless of our caveats, some clinicians have found psychoanalytic theory to be among the useful frameworks for treating procrastination. An example of the psychoanalytic framework applied to the apparently successful treatment of a chronic dissertation procrastinator was furnished in a well-known case by Arlow (1989). Tom, a 30-year-old junior professor at an Eastern university could not finish his dissertation. According to Arlow, he was all but complete, except for the finishing touches on a few notes and on oral defense. However, try as he could, he was not able to complete the task. He also could not maintain a satisfactory intimate relationship with his fiancee and squabbled with her constantly. From a clinical perspective, a number of other aspects of Tom's behavior are interesting. He was obviously above-average in verbal intelligence and did exceptionally well in the early grades of school. He believed that only "grinds" have to study and work hard, a pattern that followed him through life, causing him to avoid serious study. He seemed to have a number of autonomic symptoms, being quite shy and fearful as a child, and emotionally labile and prone to daydreaming as an adult. When he had to recite in class, he experienced extreme autonomic responses that were unlike those of other students.



Arlow, an analyst, saw this problem conceptualized as follows: A (dissertation) examination represented to him a bloody competitive struggle in which one either kills or is killed. It also had the unconscious significance of a trial where one is pronounced innocent or guilty. To pass the examination was to be permitted to enter the counsel of elders, to have the right to be sexual, to have a woman, and to become a father. . .. Unconsciously he felt he could not become a husband or father as long as he was in analysis, which meant to him as long as his father was alive. Accordingly, successful termination of treatment had the unconscious significance of killing his father. Fear of retaliation for his murderous wishes against authority figures intensified. His impotence grew



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more severe: Unconsciously he imagined that within the woman's vagina was the adversary who would kill or mutilate him. (1989: pp. 49-50).



While there are many facts in Tom's case that suggest alternative interpretations based on other, perhaps more cognitive-behavioral constructs, it is noteworthy that the patient did indeed complete his Ph.D. after treatment by Dr. Arlow, and the treatment seemed to be successful. When procrastination occurs suddenly and in very delimited areas in a person's life, we often find utility in framing our hypotheses in a psychodynamic fashion. We find it a useful framework to hypothesize that some unknown and unconscious aspect regarding the event's completion is distressing and consequently, the person strives, always unconsciously, to avoid task completion. Therefore, in treating atypical procrastination it is often useful to establish the meaning of what an event symbolizes for an individual. The following case study highlights this: Susan, Hack, and Eric were three very bright siblings in their mid-30s. Susan had failed her doctoral dissertation orals exams three times. This occurred despite the fact that her course work had been excellent in graduate school and she was well respected by her peers and teachers. Hack was a recent graduate from a medical-residency pr0gram. Twice he failed his boards. Eric had been a Phi Beta Kappa graduate with degree in chemical engineering. 'fry as he could, Eric could not Uget it togethe~ to apply to graduate school. All three persons entered individual therapy at various times, each with different therapists. Their therapeutic "issues" were quite similar. The children's father had been a very intelligent chemical engineer, who, due to a lack of fortune and opportunity, was never able to rise above a BS degree. The mother had even less formal education, despite the fact that she was very bright. Although both parents ostensibly championed education for their children, both parents were clearly annoyed by the greater achievements of their children, and frequently disparaged the fact that their children received more formal schooling than either of them. Although these comments were often made in a seemingly lighthearted manner, they were made consistently during the children's graduate careers. Brief psychodynamic therapy helped each adult child identify a pattern of wanting to fail for the reason of not threatening their parents, whom they loved deeply. The children received between 20 and 50 sessions of dynamically oriented psychotherapy, during which time they were able to meet their educational objectives. Several years later, Susan completed her Ph.D. degree in neurochemistry and received a tenure-track position at a university. Hack eventually decided to change career emphasis and now is a physician in a small town, "a decision much more congruent with my temperament, compared to



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the big-city lifestyle I thought I needed." Tom was able to successfully apply to graduate schools and now has completed his dissertation. Although he exhibited some dissertation avoidance and procrastination, he is now in the final stages of this endeavor and plans a career in research in a corporate setting.



In psychodynamic therapy for procrastination, our intent is to identify the hidden meaning of achievement-related events for the procrastinator. Invariably, an achievement-related event confficts with a fear of achievement, often with the fear of achievement only coming out during brief psychotherapy. Clinical impressions seem to suggest that conffict often involves an authoritarian parent figure who usually has ambivalence regarding the adult child's achievement (see Ferrari & Olivette, 1993, 1994), although this observation is simply our impression and needs legitimate research. Our technique is a general, explorative, time-limited model similar to the one advocated by Strupp and Binder (1984). Sometimes procrastination is limited not simply to specific tasks, but instead to tasks assigned by specific persons. For example, a person may have no problem completing a task until it is assigned by a boss or someone who reminds the procrastinator of a significant person in his or her past. A common example of this occurs regarding adult children of alcoholics. Although few characteristics have been uniquely identified with this group, previous research (McCown, Carise, & Johnson, 1991) has established that elevated procrastination is common. This is not surprising. It is easy to imagine an environment where the child is punished for completing any activity, regardless of how conscientiousness his or her performance was. Often, such adult children appear to become hypersensitive to rejection from authoritative figures and hence demonstrate avoidance regarding task completion. The following case study illustrates this: John was a manager at a local branch of a national hardware chain. His work was consistently conscientious. He had been rapidly promoted from his status as floor clerk up through the ranks and appeared very much "on the fast track." He was just about to be promoted to regional manager, an unheard-of accomplishment for a young man of 27. Prior to this promotion, John was forced to spend a great deal of time at the corporate headquarters in another city. There he had to interact with older males whom he "instinctively" disliked. He later found himself having difficulty completing any of the tasks that these older managers told him to do. He would deliberately stall their completion for days at a time, threatening his promotional status and perhaps his very job. When John sought treatment, he was 300 miles from his home town and due to remain for only a few more weeks. He had no insight whatsoever into any of his behavior and was convinced that Hall these old



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men are being big fat assholes to me, though I don't really know why." Four weeks of twice-weekly sessions of psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy allowed John to develop the hypothesis that he behaved poorly around older men because of his hatred toward his father, an abusive and alcoholic authoritarian. Regardless of John's accomplishments, they were not enough for his rigid, never-grateful dad. When John realized the source of his anger, his demeanor immediately changed and he went from being hostile to feeling hurt and scared. However, John became overconscientious about carrying out his superiors' commands, to the point where it would potentially interfere with other aspects of his life. Upon returning home, John followed up on his previous therapist's recommendations for continued treatment. He spent about 24 sessions in individual therapy, generally focused on his anger at his father. Today his problem is substantially resolved and he has not demonstrated any inappropriate procrastination regarding directives from older men.



Ambivalence about achievement has been well documented in women, but it also occurs with men. Often this takes the form of dissertation procrastination, where a previously very high-functioning person suddenly cannot complete a discrete task. Almost always this is a task associated with a rite of passage, often a dissertation, as we discussed previously, but sometimes also an examination (such as a medical licensing exam or specialty-board or bar exam). The following case study indicates such an example with a female physician: Donna was a 34-year-old neurologist at an East Coast university who failed her specialty boards on two occasions. This occurred despite the fact that she clearly had outstanding ability, having graduated from an Ivy League school and made ADA, the national medical honor society. The analyst stated that she would probably require several years of treatment, which left Donna feeling more disparate. At the insistence of her departmental chair, she consulted a psychiatrist, who, being unable to suggest any pertinent interventions, referred her to a psychoanalyst. At the insistence of her friend, Donna next consulted with a psychologist experienced in the treatment of procrastination. Donna was administered an MMPI and a clinical interview. Donna appeared very anxious, but only when she spoke about her upcoming exams. Other than this she seemed quite calm and well adjusted. There was no evidence of thought disorder or any other Axis I or IT difficulties from the MMPI. Importantly, there was also no prior history of any type of test anxiety, an important personality variable to rule out in the case of any type of examination-related procrastination or academic failure. The clinician hypotheSized that Donna's repeated failure had to do with a fear of success and of ultimate independence that passing her



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boards would bestow on her. Donna was presented with this interpretation, but initially denied it vehemently. The therapist, not wishing to challenge her resistance, instead began working with her on behav-ior goals, attempting to teach Donna a number of relaxation skills that might prove necessary if she were to successfully study for the upcoming exams. Four sessions into treatment Donna changed her demeanor and announced, nyou know, I've been thinking about what you told me about fear of failure and all. I think it might be true." Donna then related a story regarding the fact that all of her life she had studied to distract herself from the fact that she felt she was not physically attractive and too fat. While other girls and young women were dating or enjoying a social life, Donna hid in her room with her books, essentially overachieving to fill her blank, empty evenings. The therapist then offered an interpretation: Passing of the specialty boards was the final major test that Donna would take in life. She would then have no reason left to spend evenings and weekends studying. She would then have to confront her feelings about being lonely and unattractive. When offered this interpretation Donna began to cry. She then stated, nyou know, it's just like you've reading parts of my mind I've been afraid to admit to anyone." Within several sessions Donna began to form the hypothesis that her compulsive studying was interfering with her passing of the boards. She decided to pursue a different strategy: relax, study less, and take things as they come. Donna eventually passed the boards and even began dating. She remains in treatment to deal with her negative self-image, but the quality of her life has improved substantially. UnfortUnatel~ there are few guidelines to determine when a more psychodynamic treatment for procrastination is appropriate, compared to a more traditional or cognitive-behavioral treatment. Our rule of thumb is Simple, although perhaps not always accurate: If there is a history of procrastination, cognitive-behavioral and behavioral interventions are appropriate. If the behavior is discrete and involves a specific event or person, a more psychodynamic framework may be necessary to explore the meaning that the event has for the person and its associations with prior significant events or people.



FAMILY TREATMENT Family treatment may be indicated if there is more than one person in the family who procrastinates, or if the procrastination seems to be maintained by reinforcers occurring in family interaction. For example, it is not



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atypical to find a bright child encouraged to delay completing his homework by one of his or her siblings who are jealous of superior ability or attention bestowed on the academically more talented youth. Parents often muddle the situation even more by punishing the child who suggests task avoidance, thus inflaming an already volatile situation (McCown & Johnson, 1993). Family therapy can teach parents more appropriate strategies of intervention designed to reduce the level of sibling competition and sabotage. Family therapy may be helpful when one or more parent has a problem with being unconscientious and not completing tasks on time, and the parent or parents' behaviors affect other family members (L'Abate & Bagarozzi, 1993). Brief, problem-oriented interventions, such as those advocated by McCown and Johnson (1993), may be effective in convincing the procrastinating parent that his or her behavior is deleterious to the family. When the parent refuses or is incapable of behavioral change, family therapy can be invaluable in helping shift the burden of responsibility to other persons in the family system who may be more responsible. Perhaps the best indication for family therapy is when one or more family members consistently procrastinate necessary or preventative medical treatment. Sometimes such persons will have a history of anxiety or depression. More frequently, they may also have a concurrent personality disorder. Regardless, they avoid physicians and other medical personnel, much to the dismay of their families and friends, to say nothing of the healthcare professionals they peripherally encounter. Brief family therapy is often helpful in getting these persons to take more responsibility for their own bodies and their health-related behaviors. The approach by Johnson and McCown (1993) involves empowering families to take responsibility for their own behaviors. Johnson and McCown (1995) have applied this model directly to medical patients with very good results. Often, one or two family meetings with ill family members may be sufficient to convince them that their family cares about their well-being and that their medical procrastination is hurting people who care about them. When family dynamics become more complicated, or if the family has a history of longer term family dysfunctioning, referral to a practitioner with expertise in family treatment is probably warranted.



CONCLUSION Adult procrastination is often substantially different from that encountered in college students. It often requires different treatment strategies and longer interventions. The clinician must be able to use a number



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of therapeutic modalities, including behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, and psychodynamic. Psychological testing is almost always helpful, and occasionally physical problems must be ruled out. Competence as a clinician does not guarantee that treatment will be effective. However, a lack of clinical skills almost certainly guarantees that treatment will be unsuccessful. We pointed out that brief, episodic task-d.elay and avoidance tendencies, labeled atypical procrastination, may require a different therapeutic emphasis than reoccurring, "lifelong" procrastination, called typical procrastination. Atypical procrastination may best be treated by a psychodynamic approach in order to explore why procrastination as a lifestyle may best be treated by a cognitive-behavioral approach in which the individual is taught effective strategies to prevent a procrastination cycle. Individual, group, and family therapy, as well as assessing other dysfunctionallife patterns (e.g., drug use), also should be considered. In summary, we tried to outline different treatment options for therapists who treat adult procrastination. We relied on case histories of clients we have treated as examples to highlight these options. However, we continue to advocate that well-designed and carefully conducted treatment studies be performed to compare and contrast different procrastinationtreatment techniques. Through good empirical edata we believe that effective, efficient techniques will be developed to treat both lifelong and shortterm procrastination tendencies.



CHAPTER



11



EPILOGUE AS PROLOGUE



CONSIDERATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Throughout this volume, emphasis has been placed on reporting empirical findings and on the extension of these findings to clinical and counseling intervention. In addition, trait procrastination has been discussed from a wide variety of perspectives, and promising directions for research have been presented. Thus, as one of the few books on procrastination, the work in this volume represents a systematic effort to present and integrate often disparate psychological areas. One of the limitations of this book is that the authors have been frequently forced to draw tentative conclusions by using studies with substantial methodological limitations. This problem is common to any new field of psychological or behavioral science research, where exploratory studies often predominate over theory-driven efforts that are part of a systematic program of research. Although this is a source of concern, we remain optimistic that this difficulty will soon be rectified. As the outstanding work of the contributors within this volume indicates, methodological sophistication is rapidly increasing among procrastination researchers and is now beginning to rival that of many other areas of clinical, social, and counseling psychology. A similar, but more serious, concern lies in our suggestion of the use of specific and detailed therapeutic interventions made in the absence of comprehensive longitudinal and efficacy-outcome research. Consequently, many of the counseling and clinical strategies advocated as appropriate for the treatment of procrastination have occasionally been based on modest empirical grounding. As we have noted, some interventions have simply been grounded in a rational-theoretical approach combined with clinical 235



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experience. Counselors and therapists should take note of these limitations. Many of the problems that plague attempts to generalize applied research to different settings may be relevant to the work presented here. Therefore, results from the relatively small amount of outcome data regarding interventions may not generalize across different populations or settings.



SPECIFIC AREAS OF FUTURE INTEREST It is often customary to end multiauthored works such as this with a



concluding, unifying chapter that spells out future areas where resources can be meaningfully directed. Such chapters often seem presumptuous, since they frequently include suggestions from researchers in one field telling researchers in other areas how, where, and why their research should be undertaken. Occasionally, the purpose of such chapters is also less than forthright. Too often authors may use these epilogues as a springboard for advancing their specific research agendas, and hence their status in the scientific community. In some cases, a more systematic formulation of existing data is deliberately designed to support the authors' biases. In such cases, authors may even use the epilogue chapter as a forum for suggesting research that they are already planning or have tried unsuccessfully to fund. In procrastination research, we needn't worry about these problems and, instead, can devote ourselves to attempting to instill enthusiasm about the topic in various subfields of psychology and the behavioral sciences. Our purpose is to increase interest, research, and theory in a variety of areas. It is impertinent to tell other researchers with more specialized expertise about the needs of their field. Therefore, we limit the following to a discussion of areas where present research suggests a natural interface that may be fruitfully explored. NEUROSCIENCE AND BIOPSYCHOWGY



Earlier in this work we presented data suggesting that a lack of conscientiousness, along with the related construct of sensation-seeking, may categorize one subtype of procrastinators Sensation-seeking appears to possess moderately high hereditability find to be related to specific neurophysiological processes which are just beginning to be understood (Zuckerman, 1991). This suggests that at least some of the variance in procrastination may be related to genetically-mediated physiological vari-



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ables, such as activity involving the serotonergic system. Similar genetic mediation may occur for anxious task avoidance, possibly through noradrenergic projections linked to the nucleus coeruleus. At this point, we can only theorize regarding the distinct role played by neurotransmitters and receptor complexes in procrastination and discrete task avoidance. However, more recent advances in neuroscience have strongly suggested that they key to behavior will not be found in the "one neurotransmitter-one symptom" method that was popular during the first decades of this new, hybrid discipline. For example, Gray's (1987) biopsychological analyses of behavioral inhibition and activation systems provide a much more comprehensive framework for understanding behavior than for attempting to link specific behavioral syndromes to single types of neurotransmitters, including neurohormones. Gray's model may serve as an appropriate basis for describing typologies of persons who habitually postpone tasks because they are too fearful or of those who do not discriminate appropriately relevant task cues. A greater understanding of physiological variables may also affect pharmacological treatment. As indicated in Chapter 9, most treatment for procrastination has, in the past, barely reached a level of clinical significance. The judicious use of medications may help to boost the effectiveness of clinical interventions. The newer selective serotonergic reuptake inhibitors appear to have a promising efficacy profile, insofar as they may reduce depression, decrease impulsive behaviors, and inhibit the display of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. (Their effects on anxiety, however, are less clear.) In theory, these agents may act to strengthen purposeful behavior, helping patients to remain goal-oriented. These questions can only be answered with appropriate clinical research and double blind trials. DEVELOPMENTAL AND EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH



Although some information is known about the relationship between parenting styles and procrastination (Ferrari & Olivette, 1993, 1994), almost nothing is known about the severity of procrastination in children and adolescents. While teachers, parents, and school psychologists have reported anecdotal accounts of procrastination in children as young as early elementary age (M. Shure, personal communications, August, 1994), no set of studies has demonstrated the existence or significance of this behavioral syndrome in people this young. More systematized efforts may direct attention to a class of dysfunctional behavior in this age range that previously has not been recognized. This early recognition may greatly assist the student or adult later in life.



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One goal of developmental research is to provide different levels of prevention that are appropriate to the severity of the problem (L'Abate, 1994). Ideally, the developmental researcher wishes to learn about methods to prevent as many adult behavioral problems as possible, through either primary (i.e., general and broad-focused), or secondary (i.e., for persons at high risk) strategies. Presently, applied developmental research has produced outstanding methodologies to help parents treat children's behavioral problems (Schaefer & Breismeister, 1989). Howeve~ most of these interventions fall under the category of tertiary prevention, or of treating persons who already demonstrate behavioral problems. Increasing effort is now being directed toward primary and secondary prevention of a variety of childhood disorders (Shure, 1992). Of special interest are strategies designed to prevent anxiety and impulsiveness in children, because these are probably closely related to procrastination (Touchet, Shure, & McCown, 1993). Most of these strategies are classroom-based and are economically implemented. It is hoped that soon classroom-based interventions designed for primary prevention of procrastination will begin in elementary school. Clinical experience suggests that children as young as 9 or 10 can benefit from time management training. Data clearly indicates that adolescents can benefit from a variety of decision-making skills (Baron & Brown, 1991). The teaching of similar skills relevant to goal setting and task completion could be invaluable in the primary prevention of procrastination. Another goal is broader secondary prevention prior to the college years, when procrastination definitely becomes more likely to be problematic and may even increase. Successful secondary intervention would involve early identification of high-risk children and adolescents, either through specific behaviors, or through other methods, such as self-reports. However, the hope of secondary prevention presumes several applications of psycholOgical knowledge that are not presently available. It will be necessary to develop methods to identify children at high risk before their procrastinating behavior beconies more problematic. Next, it will be necessary to construct and test appropriate intervention strategies. Third, it will be imperative to identify appropriate persons who could benefit from these early interventions. Perhaps of greatest importance will be the precise identification of negative and positive reinforcers in the maintenance of procrastination. Implementation of steps to meet the goal of secondary prevention for procrastination lags far behind available strategies for other behavioral disorders. It is, we believe, a promising field for applied developmental, community, and (perhaps most of all) school psychologists.



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INDUSTRIAuORGANlZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY



An omission in this book has been an in-depth discussion of the possible importance of procrastination in the workplace. Individuals who have difficulty completing work-related tasks are not typically viewed as outstanding employees (Ferrari, 1992a). In fact, persons demonstrating elevated degrees of trait procrastination probably do not find employment appropriate for their education and ability (although this remains an empirical question). Employers seem to recognize this. Consequently, it is not uncommon for potential employees to be screened for suitability in part by the use of one of several nebulous measures of "job time usage," none of which appear to have been developed with respect to predictive criterion validity. It may be of interest for organizational psychologists to develop accurate measures of work-related procrastination, with the belief that these may be successfully used in employee selection and promotion decisions. However, prior to the use of such instruments, carefullongitudinal validation must occu~ with close examination of the effects of workrelated trait procrastination on a variety of employee outcome measures with behavioral referents. It is important to note that none of the existing measures for trait procrastination discussed in this book are directly applicable to work-related behavior. It would be both unethical and probably



legally indefensible to attempt to use any of the present measures for employee selection or promotion.



Despite screening mechanisms such as interview processes, questionnaires, and the evaluation of previous work history, many workers apparently do exhibit job-related task avoidance and procrastination. Programs designed to reduce work-related task avoidance conceivably would contribute to increased productivity. Since the implications of procrastination include decreased revenues and opportunities for advancement, we believe this area may be of substantial interest to industrial and organizational psychologists. Unfortunately, there is insufficient data examining corporate milieu or managerial styles that either foster or decrease work-related procrastination. This is a curious omission, insofar as researchers, such as Lowman (1993), note that procrastination is a potentially significant work-related dysfunction. Some empirical support for the notion that work climates may effect procrastination has been found in a dissertation by Coote (1987). More specifically, Galue (1990) found that job exception and contingency information were related to procrastination and that perceived job ambiguity was related to an employee's self-report of procrastination.



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It may be further hypothesized that individuals with a dispositional tendency to postpone tasks in several areas of their lives may be more vulnerable to displaying this behavior within their employment settings, depending upon particular management patterns. We would predict this may relate to the subtypes of procrastinators we have attempted to empirically define. For example, anxious procrastinators may perform better if their supervisors assumed a less punitive stance. Procrastinators lacking in conscientiousness may require additional structure and a lack of options for "excuse making." Finally, it may be hypothesized that appropriate targeted counseling in Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) may contribute to increased worker productivity and also decrease the subjective stress associated with procrastination within employment settings and in other spheres of life. PERSONAliTY PSYCHOLOGY



Throughout this volume we have used the term "personality" with some trepidation, preferring terms less associated with the many connotations of dispositions or personologic variables (see Pervin, 1990). Regardless, our position is that procrastination may warrant the status of a trait and is probably an important individual difference variable. Thait procrastination is explainable within a variety of contemporary models of personality. These include the factor analytic theories of Eysenck (1967) and the "Big Five" of Tupes and Christal (1961), the latter approach enjoying increasing popularity (c.f. Costa & Widiger, 1994). A trait theory of procrastination is .also congruent with explanations of personality furnished by cognitive and social learning theorists and even those from psychoanalytic and psychodynamiC models. One concern is that a construct fitting into any disparate theoretical schema may avoid the necessary scientific scrutiny and criticism. Perhaps the most appropriate test of the usefulness of the construct of trait procrastination is whether it can generate a priori novel predictions, which could then be validated in subsequent investigations. If it can, then its further use is assured. If not, then Occam's razor and the scientific rule of parsimony suggest that it is best forgotten. Nonetheless, integration of procrastination with mainstream personality theory would require further work on construct validity with particular emphasis on establishing a nomological network regarding the construct, other factors of personality, and behavior. Finally, it is important to realize that available data suggests that procrastination is not a unitary construct. That is, trait procrastination may have significant overlap within various orthogonal personality factors that



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may also exhibit different situational correlates. Using Cattell's (1965) distinction, procrastination is a "surface trait," a common behavioral syndrome due to two or more "source traits," or more fundamental constructs. Mathematically, this is expressed by the existence of two or more principal components, which may be related to successful classifications of typologies. Existing data strongly suggests that at least two "source traits" contribute to procrastination: a lack of conscientiousness, and some form of anxiety or neuroticism. This means that people may have elevated levels of trait procrastination for entirely different reasons-a fact that should not be overlooked by clinicians. Furthermore, aspects of trait procrastination within personality theory remain to be explored. For example, a legitimate empirical question involves the relationship between procrastination and Eysenck's Psychoticism factor insofar as procrastinators may simply deliberately disregard social mores and constraints pertaining to task completion and achievement. Hence, procrastinatory behavior becomes a manifestation of this disregard, as opposed to a manifestation of anxiety or lack of conscientiousness. At this point in time, much more research is needed to precisely determine what place, if any, procrastination reserves within contemporary factor-analytical-based personality theory. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY



Social psychology constitutes on of the most vigorous areas of psychology in recent years and this trend shows no evidence of abating. There are many ways in which recent theoretical developments in social psychology can be applied to explain and predict the behavior of procrastinators. However, research in this area should now begin investigating the mutual causal processes that social psychological factors and procrastinating individuals likely exert on each other. Extreme social behavior is modified by its environmental milieu and also exerts reciprocal influences that change the milieu. Unidirectional hypotheses, although convenient for the researcher, are probably inappropriate models for the complex manner in which reality operates. Consequently, appropriate methodology will most certainly involve greater use of multivariate models designed to measure change, especially models such as confirmatory factor analyses with repeated observations (Collins & Hom, 1991). Social psychology has also applied its methodologically rigorous technology to the understanding of the relationship between cognitive processes and social variables. Again, there are numerous areas of inquiry or hypotheses that come to mind regarding procrastination. However, one foreseeable problem is that procrastination remains somewhat of an ill-



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defined trait, especially in naturalistic settings. Measurement error is likely to distort findings substantially, unless models are chosen that can successfully address this problem. Fortunately, the popular confirmatory factor analysis models of JOreskog and SOrbom (1988), and Benter (1989) were designed for these situations. Latent trait models of change can be modeled successfully despite measurement error. This minimizes our need for dependence on univariate and unidirectional social psychological research regarding procrastination, which has been the standard to date. Future research will therefore require multiple measures of procrastination (such as behavioral indices, peer ratings, and teacher or employer evaluations) to augment simple self-reports via questionnaire methodology. Fortunately, extensive knowledge regarding the mathematics of latent trait models is no longer necessary with the development of newer, "user friendly" computer packages. All that is required is an understanding of matrix algebra, which is not beyond the ability of most current graduate students in the behavioral sciences. The other major obstacle to the use of latent trait or confirmatory factor models is now practically irrelevant. Such models used to consume hours of mainframe computer time and were beyond the means of researchers without substantial budgets, as well as of friendly and tolerant computer center staff. Now, however, the availability of popular computer programs and powerful desktop computers makes it possible to analyze very complex, interactive relationships with many parameters that would have been prohibitively time-consuming to model even a decade ago. What took several hours of dedicated CPU time on a mainframe computer may now be done in several minutes on a single desktop unit. The suggestion that researchers should make greater use of multivariate causal methodology should not be taken as suggesting that traditional laboratory studies should be abandoned. Far from it! The recent history of cognitive social psychology has shown that there is substantial benefit from developments which occur in tandem with well-controlled laboratory studies. Results from correlational studies, however, are inherently limited, unless they are confined to well-defined and theoretically-derived hypotheses. Progress regarding procrastination is evident in the fact that hypothetico-deductive experimentation and theory building, rather than being a mere "cast net approach," is now necessary. CUNICAUCOUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY



Data presented in this volume suggests a relationship between procrastination and several different types of psychopathology. However, since studies regarding psychopathology have been primarily correla-



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tional and conducted at a single point in time, conclusions are limited. Longitudinal research is needed to solidify a claim of any causal relation. This is true for both Axis I and Axis II disorders. A promising line of inquiry involves research that evaluates procrastination as a symptom and a risk factor for future problems. Along similar lines, more research is needed to ascertain the extent to which task avoidance contributes to internal distress and interpersonal difficulties. Again, more sophisticated research designs are necessary to address complex clinical difficulties associated with procrastination. Regardless of the role of procrastination in major psychopathology, this behavior is a source of concern for many people, including college students. Individuals will continue to seek treatment for it and counselors, therapists, and clinicians will continue to struggle with finding appropriate methods of intervention. Chapters 9 and 10 make it clear that we are far from developing satisfactorily effective treatment strategies. Because we know so little about modifying this apparently distressing behavioral pattern, it is incumbent upon practitioners to conduct outcome research regarding interventions designed to modify procrastination. It is doubtful that individual clinician/researchers will be able to establish definitive patterns from their interventions, simply because they do not treat sufficient numbers of clients to draw valid conclusions. But there is no reason why research teams across sites-such as within college counseling centers or private group practice-could not pool data together in collaborative research efforts. In the absence of substantial grant funding, collaborative research might be the only feasible financial mechanism by which procrastination outcome research can expand. ExPERIMENTAL PSYCHOWGY AND EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOWGY: THE NEED FOR A RETURN TO BASIC RESEARCH



A common complaint of practicing mental health clinicians is that research-both of the "basic" and "applied clinical" varieties-is irrelevant to their needs. This complaint is certainly reciprocated by experimental psychologists and other "basic researchers," who believe that clinicians frequently ignore the potential contributions that their efforts could make to the goal of enhancing well-being (Boneau, 1992). In this age of widespread funding cuts for behavioral science research, the debate about the relevance of basic versus applied research is likely to become more acrimonious. We hope these controversies can be avoided by researchers in this area. However, if forced to choose between conflicting funding priorities, our position and financial resources would now side with the neglected



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experimentalist. Basic experimental and laboratory research regarding procrastination should be developed at an accelerated pace. While educational, personality, social psychological, outcome, and other areas of research are important, equally important and more neglected are fmdings generated from true or quasi-experimental designs. One mistake that we hope laboratory-based procrastination researchers avoid is the belief that they are operating in a theoretical vacuum. Many observers have expressed concerns that the behavioral sciences, especially psychology, are now much too splintered to be considered a single, integrated discipline (Bevan, 1991). An increasing tendency toward specialization is thought by many to impede any sense of unity or ability for either researchers or practitioners to learn from areas outside of their own narrow fields. Basic research needs to include the integration of theories from cognitive, social, personality, clinical, and physiological psychology. One example, taken from a broad array of possibilities, is the area of attention, where there is a rich scientific tradition potentially applicable to procrastination. M. W. Eysenck (1988) has argued that individuals who are high in trait anxiety differ from those low on this trait in several aspects of attentional functioning. Those high in trait anxiety show greater attentional selectivity, have smaller available attentional capacity, and greater distractibility than people who are low in trait anxiety. Additionally, Eysenck proposes that the degree to which this tendency is demonstrated is a function of specific stimulus attributes. Given what we know to be true about the behaviors of procrastinators, a legitimate question is whether attentional aspects to stimulus cues can help explain aspects of procrastinatory behavior. For example, it may well be that procrastinators have a greater susceptibility to distraction than nonprocrastinators. If this is demonstrated, further questions would regard the contributory role of various stimuli, arousal states, and situational contexts. Questions such as these may seem endless-perhaps because they have not been examined in a systematic fashion. In some ways, the lack of laboratory-based research is surprising. Apart from the outstanding efforts of Milgram and his colleagues in Israel (e.g., Milgram, Dangour, & Raviv, 1992; Milgram, Gehrman, & Keinan, 1992), and some of the contributors of this volume, this domain of research has been practically void of participants. Procrastination is an area where subjects are not hard to find and where college students are appropriate for drawing valid conclusions for many questions. (It is difficult to argue that the use of undergraduates in laboratory-based procrastination research will lead to limited generalizability of findings.) Because of this, and because of the comparative novelty of the topic, important contribu-



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tions can still be made by individual researchers who lack sophisticated equipment and elaborate budgets. Major advances can also be made by graduate students, working in conjunction with interested and mentoring faculty. There are few fields in psychology that are so promising for the young researcher. All that is needed is the intellectual curiosity, which we hope this volume has helped to foster.



CONCLUSION We would like to extend our utmost appreciation to the contributors to this volume and to the many individuals who made it possible. Procrastination is an exciting area with many dimensions, and our hope is that the reader obtains an understanding of the complexities involved in research and intervention efforts. Finally, we are optimistic that work will continue in the many implications associated with this construct. For those who are interested or at least curious, the field remains wide open, and researchers can make substantial contributions.



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INDEX



Ability, 40-43 Absenbnindedness, 62 Academic Hassles Inventory (AHI), 154 Academic procrastination, 187-210 Academic Procrastination State Inventory (APSI), 76, 85-87 Achievement motivation, 40 Achievement tests, 192 Adjusbnent, 148-156 Adult Inventory of Procrastination (AlP), 15-18, 49, 64-67, 174, 205 Adult procrastination, 216-219 Agitation, 97-112 Aitken's Procrastination Inventory (API), 26, 49, 52-54, 205 Alcoholism, 172, 196, 231 Anger Expression Scale, 173-175 Anger suppression, 171, 172 Anorexia, 17 Anxiety, 9, 22, 29-30, 51, 52, 59, 62, 63, 69, 91, 99, 123137-167, 170, 194, 199201 Anxiolytic drugs, 219, 220 Applied-decison theory, 6 Assessment, 194-196, 221-224 Attachment theory, 158-160 Attributions, 74 Atypical procrastination, 211-216, 226-232 Augustine, 21 Authoritarian parenting, 24, 25, 128, 231 Authoritarianism, 117 Avoidance, 59, 66, 162, 198, 199



Beck's Depression Inventory (BOI), 76, 140 Behaviorism, 25-34 Benzodiazepines, 199, 200, 220 "Big Five," 43, 44, 76-80, 120 Biopsychological variables, 45, 46, 236, 237 Brain damage, 45 BS,206 Buck-passing, 59, 61 Bulimia,17 Bums Perfectionism Scale (BPS), 116, 121, 123,175 Causal attributions, 37, 38 Characterological tendencies, 169-186 Childhood experiences, 23-25, 227 Christian scripture, 8 Cognitive and cognitive-behavioral theories, 34-38 Cognitive complexity, 169 Compulsive Activity Checklist (CAC), 179 Conscientiousness, 43, 44, 79, 81, 89, 95, 190, 199, 201-204, 213, 227 Conditioning, 28-30 Conflict theory of decision making, 61 Coping, 164-166, 178 Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS), 164-166 Cortical arousel, 213 Costlbenefits analysis, 6 Counseling, 112, 155, 218, 219, 242, 243 Covert negativeness, 68 Cross-cultural considerations, 107-109



265



266



INDEX



Death,23 Decisional Procrastination Scale (DPS), 178,



179 Definitions with irrationality, 7 moral dimension in, 8 multidimensional,11-12 operational, 9-11 with temporal emphasis,S, 6 Dejection, 99-107 Dementia, 22 Depression, 9, 51, 53, 117, 133, 134, 137167, 194, 195 and anxiety, 38, 39 and low self-esteem, 38, 39 unipolar, 17-18 Developmental approach, 237, 238 Diligence, 64 DispOSitional tendencies, 36, 37 Doing It Now, 204-210 Dominance, 52 OSM-III-R, 17, 115, 171, 176, 183, 209 DSM-N, 19 Dysfunctional beliefs, 144 Dyslexia, 195 Dysphoric affect, 68 Educational research, 238 Ego-dystOniC cognition, 11 Ego involvement, 130-131, 170 Egyptians, 4 Emergency rooms, 6 Energy levels, 52, 59 English Achievement Test, 41 Everyday procrastination, 56-70 Expected values, 6 Experimental psychology, 243-245 Extinction, 25 Extraversion, 42-44 Family, 114-116, 232, 233 Fear, 170 Fear of failure, 35, 51, 54, 73-76, 82, 92, 93, 118, Ul, 123, 139 Flinders University's Decisional Procrastination Scale, 49, 61-63 Fluid consumption, 131 Forgetfulness, 181 Frontal lobe, 45



Freud, Sigmund, 22 Frustration, 52 Gender differences, 140 General anxiety disorder, 17-18 General Hassles Inventory (GHI), 152 General Procrastination Scale (GPS), 46, 49, 56-61, 76, 121, 123, 140, 141, 151, 152 Greco-Roman civilization, 8 Group therapy, 190, 204-210, 215, 216 Hassles, 150, 151 Hassles and Uplifts Scale, 151 Hassles Scale, 150, 151 Humiliation, 170 HypothalamiC pituitary adrenal axis, 45 Impatience, 62 Impulsivity, 42-43, 199, 213 Incest, 25 Indecisiveness, 59, 62 Industrial/organizational psychology, 239, 240 Identity style, 63 Individual differences, 34 Individual therapy, 208, 209 Industrial ReVolution, 4 Intelligence, 40-43 Irrational beliefs, 35-36, 51 Irrational cognitions, 51, 72, 73 Learned Helplessness, 37, 38 Leaming theory, 26 Life Experiences Survey (LES), 151 Life satisfaction, 68, 69 Life stress, 148-156 Locus of control, 37, 38, 62, 118 Low-threat situations, 130-132 Lynfield Obsessional/Compulsive Questionnaire, 174, 180-183 Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, 175 Measurement, 84-90 Medical procrastination,31 Meta-analysis, 187-189 Memory loss, 181 Minnesota MultiphasiC Personality Inventory (MMPI), 194, 199, 231



INDEX Monoamine oxidase inhibitors, 221 Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS),120 Need achievement, 80, 81 Need for achievement, 58 Neobehaviorism, 22 NEO-PI-R, 43-44, 120 Neurotic avoidance, 190 Neurotic disorganization, 58, 59 Neuroticism, 39, 44, 45, 79, 81, 89, 149, 150 New Testament, 8 Noncompetitiveness, 62 Obsessive compulsive disordet; 18, 173-185 Operant conditioning, 84 Optimism, 59, 163, 164 Organization, 58 Overarousel, 46



Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 4



Parental expectancies, 126-130 Passive aggression, 25, 132, 171-173 Path analysis, 93-95, 122 Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), 141,142 Perceived incompetence, 68 Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), 151 Per£ectionism,38,59,6O,113-136,139,144,173 Perfonnance evaluation, 145 Permissive parenting, 24 Personal Projects Analysis, 103, 104 Personality disorders, 18-19, 117, 169-186, 195 Personality Disorders Questionnaire, 19 Personality Research Form (PRF), 43 Personological explanations, 40-45 Personality psychology, 240, 241 Personalized systems of instruction, 32-34, 41 Pessimism, 149, 163, 164 Phobias, 17, 18, 30, 31 Positive and Negative Affect Scales (PANAS), 105, 106, 110 Post-traumatic stress disorder, 17 Prefrontal lobe, 45 Prinicpal components analysis, 150 Private self-consciousness, 36, 37 Procrastination Assessment Scale-Students (PASS), 48-52, 76, 121, 122, 123, 138, 139,154



267 Procrastination Checklist Study Tasks (PCS), 76, 84-85 Psychoanalytic perspective, 22 Psychodynamic theories, 23-25, 218 Psychodynamic treatment, 228-232 Psychological adjustment, 156-160 Psychopharmacology, 219-221 Psychoticism, 45 Punctuality, 51 Punishment, 27, 31 Rationalization, 59, 61 Reaction to Tests Scale, 141 Rebelliousness, 58 Reinforcement theory, 26-28 Risk management, 6 Rotter's Locus of Control Scale, 37 Schizophrenia, 9, 17, 223 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), 22, 41, 191, 192 Self-actualization, 117 Self-appraisal, 146 Self-concealment, 146 Self-concept, 52, 147 Self-consciousness, 59, 62, 63, 143, 162 Self-confidence, 50, 51, 139, 169 Self-control, 119 Self-discrepancy, 97-100 Self-efficacy, 36, 55, 125, 143, 198, 199, 206 Self-esteem, 51, 59, 62, 66, 74, 139, 143, 169 Self-evaluation, 143-148 Self-expectancies,125 Self-handicapping, SO, 51, 59, 62, 63, 143, 146, 148, 162 Self-help books, 24 Self-monitoring, 62 Self-presentation, 59, 60, 146 Self-regulation, 68, 109, 110, 125, 134 Self-report measures, 47-70 of academic procrastination, 48-52 of everyday procrastination, 56-70 Self-socialization, 161 Self-statements, 36, 37 Self-uncertainty, 158-160 Self-worth, 80, 81 Shipley Intelligence Test, 41 Shopping, 15, 60, 66 Social approval, 145 Social comparison, 59, 60, 147, 160, 161



268 Social desirability, 176



Social psychology, 241, 242 Specious rewards, 31, 32 Stress, 224 Strong's Procrastination Log, 76 Structured Clinical Interview of the Diagnosis (SCIDS), 19 Student Worry Scale (SWS), 141, 142 Study Problems Questionnaire (SPQ), 76, 86-90 Substance abuse, 9, 17, 18, 225, 226 Symptom-Checklist-90-R (SClr90-R), 154



Task aversiveness, 51, 54, 68 Thsk plan, 202 Thxes,10 'leI-Aviv Procrastination Inventory, 49, 67-69 Telephone survey, 15



INDEX Temperamental explanations, 40-45 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), 40 Thrill-seeking, 46, 60 Tune dependency, 90-93 Tune management, 79, 84, 188 Time perception, 44, 45 'frait procrastination, 97-112 1i'eatment length, 216-218 'Iiicyclic antidepressents, 220, 221 Tuckman's Procrastination Scale, 49, 54-56 Type A behavim; 53, 68, 118, 224 Underarousal, 46



Webster New Collegiate Dictionary, 8 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test (WAIS), 22,192,193 Worry Domains Questionnaire (WPQ), 142