Abstract
Procrastination is a self-regulatory failure in which people voluntarily but irrationally delay important tasks. Trait procrastination is estimated to affect 15–20% of the total population and leads to a significant decrease in performance, satisfaction with achievements, and quality of life. Procrastination is related to impulsivity and reduced executive control, especially in the domain of inhibition. Moreover, procrastinatory tendencies seem to increase with negative affect, suggesting impaired emotion regulation. The aim of this study was to investigate the neuronal mechanisms of inhibition, error processing, and behavioral control under pressure of punishment in procrastinators. Non-student subjects recruited to low (LP) and high procrastination (HP) groups performed an fMRI monetary Go/No-go task. HP showed significantly lower error-related activity in ACC than LP. There was also a significant group by condition interaction in the ACC and right DLPFC suggesting increase of control during the punishment condition in LP but not HP group. These results suggest that procrastinators have impaired error processing mechanisms which may add to the persistence of procrastination through difficulties in correction of faulty behaviors. Procrastination also seems to be related to a decreased ability to intensify self-control in more demanding situations and/or impaired coping in the context of negative situations.
Highlights
Procrastination is a self-regulatory failure in which people voluntarily but irrationally delay some tasks, despite knowing that such a behavior will lead to discomfort
Post-hoc t-tests with Bonferroni correction revealed that subjects committed fewer errors (ERRORSPUN vs REW t(35) = −2,71, p < 0.05, ERRORSPUN vs NEU t(35) = −5,87, p < 0.001) and had the slowest reaction times (RTPUN vs REW t(35) = 4,86, p < 0.001, RTPUN vs NEU t(35) = 3,42, p < 0.01) in the PUN condition
Lack of significant differences found in performance and reaction times may be a matter of statistical power and relatively small sample sizes – the between group effect sizes for RTs and task performance were small to medium, suggesting that with larger groups the differences could gain significance
Summary
Procrastination is a self-regulatory failure in which people voluntarily but irrationally delay some tasks, despite knowing that such a behavior will lead to discomfort. Researchers attempt to explain procrastination by looking at the phenomenon from many different perspectives: personality traits[12,13] (for review see4), decision-making style[14], time perspective[15,16], temporal motivation[4], temporal discounting[17], emotion regulation difficulties[18,19], executive dysfunctions[20,21,22] etc. A relationship between procrastination and poorer inhibition was revealed in a different, more complex task measuring resistance to proactive interference in working memory, only in women with higher level of negative affect. The authors showed that within psychotherapy patients, those who met their diagnostic criteria for procrastination got significantly higher results in substance use This may suggest that procrastination and addictions could share some common underlying mechanisms. It has already been postulated that ineffective emotion regulation and poor impulse control undermine self-control in general and could underlie procrastination, addictions and other self-control disorders[35]
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