Procrastination affects everyone, especially students. But why does procrastination affect some people more than others? And what is the best way to manage it?
The National Science Foundation has just awarded a $174,000 research grant to Emorie Beck, an associate professor of psychology in the College of Letter and Science at UC Davis to study the psychological and situational factors that contribute to procrastination among students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, fields.
The study will also lay the groundwork for scalable, personalized approaches to addressing it.
“Students may procrastinate for different reasons, under different circumstances and at different times,” said Beck, the project’s principal investigator and an associate professor of psychology in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. “We will tailor interventions to the patterns that drive procrastination for each student to support their persistence and success in STEM.”
How will researchers study procrastination among college students?
One influential model guiding the project views procrastination as a problem of regulating emotions. When faced with a task that leads to negative emotions, whether we simply don’t feel like doing it or it causes outright anxiety, procrastination by doing something else, like pulling out a phone and scrolling our social feeds, is a way to find emotional relief.
But procrastination can also be shaped by habits, competing demands and specific circumstances. The central challenge is to uncover what triggers procrastination for a particular student in a particular situation, and which strategies are most likely to help.
The first part of the project will document the environmental and psychological factors that contribute to procrastination among STEM student participants. After completing a baseline survey, the participants will receive five text messages daily for three weeks that asks them to complete a brief survey asking:
- whether they have put off a task since the last message
- about their environment or the situation at that moment
- how they feel emotionally
The second part of the project will ask students to test strategies to reduce procrastination in their daily lives. The research team will examine which strategies students use, under what circumstances they use them and how effective they are for individual students in different situations.
This three-year research project is part of a larger $1.5 million total grant that includes implementing both parts in four universities led by co-principal investigators Akira Miyake at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Logan Fiorella at the University of Georgia, Hannah Snyder at Brandeis University and Beck at UC Davis.
Why do students procrastinate?
All four of the project’s investigators have studied procrastination, and in 2022 Beck published the results of her study, which showed how much it can vary from person to person. Her study also showed that, individually, our likelihood of procrastinating can depend heavily on our current situation and environment. These factors change what approaches will curb procrastination in any given moment.
The stakes for addressing procrastination are high, since it has been shown to affect academic success and even stress and mental health. It affects grades and the ability to stick to study habits that work. Procrastination is also associated with academic misconduct, such as cheating and plagiarism.
The knowledge gained from this project could be particularly valuable for first-generation college students, who have shown significantly higher rates of procrastination. Although the current project focuses on STEM students, its person-specific approach could eventually be applied more broadly.
“Our tailored approach to addressing procrastination for students in STEM disciplines provides an opportunity to benefit all students,” said Beck.
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