The Effects of Task Interest and Difficulty on Procrastination

Abstract

Previous descriptive and correlational research suggests that procrastination may be a function of the nature of a task. Difficult and boring tasks were thought to produce greater procrastination than easy and interesting tasks. In Experiment 1 task interest and difficulty were varied in a two by two experimental design. Tasks were given to 100 subjects and procrastination time was recorded. The only reliable result was that easy-interesting tasks produced less variability in behavior than any other task type. Experiment 2 replicated these results in a more controlled laboratory setting. Task type, then, may influence variability among subjects in procrastination. Experimental work on procrastination may allow an extension of theoretical models of performance since procrastination may predispose one to poor performance. While procrastination has received attention in popular literature (Burka and Yuen, 1982; Silver and Sabini, 1982), scientific analyses have been sparse. Some researchers have explored the problem of procrastination inherent with self-paced instructional techniques (Newman et al., 1974), but much of this research is devoted to testing practical solutions for the problem (Jones, 1975; Ziesat et al., 1978). We believe that a fuller description and analysis of the behavior is necessary before reliable solutions can be proposed. A few descriptive reports of the extent of procrastination are available. Hill et al. (1978) and Briody (1980) collected questionnaire data from large samples of people on college campuses. Both studies indicated that over 80% of those sampled reported at least occasional procrastination. Only 12% of Briody's (1980) sample, however, said that their procrastination impeded performance. We thank Robin Palkovitz and Mary Ruthi for their comments on a preliminary draft of this paper. Requests for reprints should be sent to Arnold Froese, Behavioral Science Department, Sterling College, Sterling, Kansas 67579. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.147 on Wed, 21 Sep 2016 06:08:00 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 120 TRANSACTIONS OF THE KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE Such questionnaire data are interesting, but self-reports may not reflect actual performance. Taylor (1979) measured actual procrastination on classrelated tasks and found relatively low positive correlations between selfratings and actual procrastination. Taylor (1979, p. 147) concluded, however, that these correlations may indicate that procrastination is a consistent disposition in some people. The term, consistent disposition, suggests that procrastination might be a personality trait. Taylor (1979), however, failed to find significant relationships between three theoretical personality traits hypothesized to be related to procrastination, and actual procrastination. He therefore suggested that procrastination might be related to situational or task variables, or their interaction with personality variables. Taylor's subjects, in fact, procrastinated less when they liked a course and when the course or the grade in the course had great importance. Several other reports also suggest the importance of task and situational variables in procrastination. Douglass (1978), and Briody (1980) both suggested greater procrastination for difficult, unpleasant and/or boring tasks. Newman et al. (1974), however, did not find that initial attitudes about the difficulty of mathematics predicted procrastination in mathematics course work. At least some of the above findings suggest that significant differences in procrastination might be expected if we manipulate variables like task interest and difficulty. Two limited course projects at our school suggested that such differences might, in fact, be found. Experiment 1 was an attempt to replicate and expand these course projects. We hypothesized that task difficulty and interest would affect procrastination. Less procrastination was expected for easy, interesting tasks than for difficult, boring tasks.