Procrastinators lack a broad action perspective

Procrastinators Lack a BroadAction Perspective

SIEGFRIED DEWITTE* and WILLY LENS

University of Leuven, Department of Psychology, Leuven, Belgium

Abstract

In the ®rst study, the hypothesis was tested that in general optimistic procrastinatorshave chronically high action identities (i.e., a broad perspective on their actions),whereas pessimistic procrastinators have chronically low action identities to describetheir behaviour. However, the data of the ®rst study suggested that all procrastinatorslack high action identities. The second study was set up to confront our originalhypothesis with the alternative one that was based on the ®ndings of the ®rst study.Procrastinating students (classi®ed based on questionnaire data), irrespective of type,were found to lack high action identities to describe their study activities, to have morespeci®c intentions regarding studying, to postpone more of their intentions, and studyless in general than did nonprocrastinators. Some recommendations are made to providestudents with higher action identities. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Procrastination is a severe problem in modern society. About half of all people admitthat it is at least a moderate problem for them, both in daily life and in academicsettings (Ferrari, Johnson and McCown, 1995; Solomon and Rothblum, 1984). Theconsequence is that many people chronically perform below their capacities. Theymiss chances and often feel frustrated. Some procrastinators rationalize their beha-viour and come up with several possible advantages of putting o� their intentions,such as top performances before deadlines, better health because of overall lowerlevels of stress and better performances. However, recent research rejects these claims.Procrastinators have more health problems and lower grades (Depreeuw and DeNeve, 1992; Senecal, Koestner and Vallerand, 1995; Tice and Baumeister, 1997).Therefore, procrastination surely deserves the growing attention it has received inrecent years. The present paper concerns the relationship between procrastination andthe perspective the actor has on her action. We will ®rst explain what is meant byprocrastination and then proceed with the action perspective. Thereafter, we will

Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 29 April 1999Accepted 4 October 1999

European Journal of PersonalityEur. J. Pers. 14: 121±140 (2000)

*Correspondence to: Siegfried Dewitte, Department of Psychology, Tiensestraat 102, 3000 Leuven,Belgium. E-mail address: [email protected]

propose our hypothesis about the relation between procrastination and the actionperspective.

According to Lay (1986), procrastination refers to putting o� one's intentionsdeliberately. This means that procrastinators intend to perform an action at a certainmoment but do not engage in it at the moment that it was planned. Instead, theypostpone it, or even never do it at all. The phenomenon is de®ned at the behaviourallevel (not doing what was intended) as well as at the cognitive level (postponingdecisions) and does not refer to the possible causes of the dilatory behaviour. Theremay be several reasons for putting o� one's intentions, some of which we are notinterested in, such as illness, technical problems, and so on. Moreover, sometimesprocrastination might even be functional ( for instance postponing an intentionbecause crucial information is lacking, Ferrari, 1994). In this paper, we focus only onthe forms of procrastination that refer to self-regulatory problems, such as changingone's mind because one wishes to avoid the e�ort.

As mentioned above, procrastination is de®ned at the output level (either beha-vioural or cognitive) and might be the result of several processes. This is re¯ected indi�erent types of procrastinator. In 1987, Lay distinguished the optimistic procrast-inator and the pessimistic procrastinator. These types have been replicated severaltimes (McCown, Johnson, and Petzel, 1989; McCown and Johnson, 1991; Milgramand Naaman, 1996; Milgram, Gehrman and Keinan, 1992). Optimistic procrastina-tors put o� their intentions but do not worry about it (Milgram et al., 1992). They arecon®dent that they will succeed in the end, regardless of their engagement in theintended action now or later. Moreover, they overestimate their progress and theirchances to succeed and underestimate the time needed to achieve their goal (Lay,1987, 1988). In contrast, pessimistic procrastinators do worry about their dilatorybehaviour (Milgram et al., 1992). They are aware of the fact that they get behindschedule. Nevertheless, they still procrastinate because they do not know how to dealwith the task (Lay, 1987, 1988). They feel incompetent and are afraid that theirinvolvement in the task will prove their incompetence. Therefore, they procrastinateto avoid unpleasant experiences1. In sum, a major di�erence between the two typesmight be their degree of adaptiveness (Flett, Blankstein and Martin, 1995). Althoughprocrastination in general seems to be related to several psychopathologicalsymptoms (Flett et al., 1995; Lay, 1995; Ferrari et al., 1995, chapter 8), this linkmight be due primarily to pessimistic procrastinators and much less to optimisticprocrastinators, who seem to manage their problems reasonably well2.

1Some researchers found a third type of people who fail to meet deadlines (McCown et al., 1989; Depreeuwand De Neve, 1992). At ®rst sight, the troubles these people have with deadlines and their poorperformance levels might seem similar to those of procrastinators. However, it is likely that theseprocrastinators do not formulate intentions. Therefore, they may not be genuine procrastinators in thesense of Lay's de®nition, because they do not postpone their intentions. The variety in number of typesmight result from using di�erent procrastination measures. Assuming that the third type does not refer togenuine procrastinators according to Lay's de®nition, we will ignore the third type in the remainder andfocus on people who have intentions but postpone them regularly.2An alternative pair of labels for the types may be àrousal' versus àvoidance' types (Ferrari, 1992, 1993).However, this distinction emerged when di�erent measures of procrastination were used in one study. Thatis, although both questionnaires predicted dilatory behaviour, they were found to be related to di�erentaspects of procrastination (Ferrari, 1992, 1993). In contrast, the optimistic and the pessimistic type aretypically found with only one procrastination questionnaire that is combined with one measuringoptimism, anxiety, worry, and so forth (Lay, 1987; Milgram and Naaman, 1996). To date, research thatidenti®es both distinctions as one is lacking and therefore we preferred to use the labels òptimistic' versus`pessimistic'.

122 S. Dewitte and W. Lens

Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Pers. 14: 121±140 (2000)

The existence of di�erent types may have important consequences, both theoretic-ally and practically. Theoretically, dilatory behaviour may result from di�erentprocesses. For instance, Ferrari (1993) found that adult procrastinators postponedbuying Christmas presents for di�erent reasons: Some attributed their postponementto external factors (e.g., job), and some to internal factors (e.g., habit). Therefore,relations between procrastination measures and other individual di�erence variablesmay be obscured when the types are not taken into consideration. In practice, the twotypes may react very di�erently to interventions. For instance, increasing testfrequency at school (see Tuckman, 1998) may confront optimistic procrastinatorswith the fact that their progress is not as great as they ®rst thought it was. This mightalarm them early in the semester and lead them to increased e�orts, which mightprevent harm to their educational career. In contrast, the same measures may increasetest anxiety in pessimistic procrastinators and therefore debilitate their performanceeven more.

In this paper, we propose that optimistic and pessimistic procrastinators put o�their intentions because they have maladaptive action perspectives on the actions theypostpone. Before going into more detail about this hypothesis, we will explain whatwe mean by action perspective. By action perspective, we refer to the action de®nitionthe actor is aware of during performance. In fact, it is the ®rst answer that comes tomind to the question `what are you doing?'. Vallacher and Wegner (1985, 1987)showed that the answers to this question widely di�er across situations and persons,even if the behaviour that is identi®ed seems very similar from an external observer'spoint of view. A major dimension of di�erence between these identi®cations is thegenerality of the action identity. For instance, the reader may identify her presentbehaviour as `reading this paper', which is a more general identi®cation that `trying tounderstand what is meant by the concept action perspective'. On the other hand,`reading this paper' is more speci®c than `keeping up with literature on procrastina-tion', which may be another identity of the ongoing reading behaviour. The generalityof the action identity will be referred to as the level of the action identity (Vallacher andWegner, 1985, 1987).

Vallacher and Wegner (1985; Vallacher, 1993) claimed that there is a bi-directionalin¯uence of the action identity and action performance. The crucial question thenbecomes `Which action identity results in success and which one in failure for a giventask?'. Vallacher, Wegner and Somoza (1989) showed that the e�ect of the level ofidentity was moderated by the actor's pro®ciency at the task. They found thatpro®cient speakers did better at a speech task when they adopted a high (i.e.,general) action identity than when they adopted a low one. In contrast, lesspro®cient speakers did better when they adopted a low identity than when theyadopted a high one. Dewitte and Lens (1999) found that the relation between level ofaction identity and persistence was moderated by the attractiveness of a free-association task. For unpleasant tasks, they found a curvilinear relation between thelevel of identity and persistence on the task. Participants adopting an intermediatelevel (e.g., Ì'm associating') persisted longer than participants adopting a highaction identity (e.g., Ì'm helping the experimenter' or Ì'm doing a test') and thanparticipants adopting a low level (Ì'm writing' or Ì'm thinking of past experiencesto generate new words'). For unpleasant tasks, they found no relation between thelevel of identity and persistence. This implies that there might be adaptive actionidentities as well as several types of `wrong' or naõÈ ve ones. Having a certain action

Procrastination and action identities 123


identity in mind might be one example of what Corno (1993) called the ideationalaspects of self-regulation that are not easily traced behaviourally. The data alsosuggest that action identities can result in poor action performances because ofdi�erent factors. More speci®cally, they can be either too high or too low. In whatfollows, we will attempt to match procrastination types with these forms ofmaladaptive action identities.

Adopting a high action identity has several consequences. First, feedback is onlyregistered at a general level, a characteristic that might undermine motivation(Bandura, 1991; Zimmerman, 1998). This means that failures are not readilyperceived as potentially damaging to the goal that one is attempting to reach (Carverand Scheier, 1981). That is, one might register whether or not the goal has beenreached only at the end and fail to evaluate whether or not one approaches fastenough during the task. Secondly, people having a high action identity do notadequately estimate progress relative to the time left to achieve a task. This is due tothe fact that time units are rough when high identities are used (Lord and Levy, 1994).Both properties seem typical of optimistic procrastinators. Optimists, by de®nition,expect the best, even in the face of failure (Scheier and Carver, 1985). Moreover,optimistic procrastinators underestimate the time needed to do a task (Lay, 1988).Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that optimistic procrastinators mightchronically have high action identities in mind. These are not always adequate(Dewitte and Lens, 1999; Vallacher et al., 1989), because overcoming di�culty mightrequire that one focuses on the details (Carver and Scheier, 1981; Lord and Levy,1994; Vallacher and Wegner, 1985).

Further, identifying one's action with a low-level description has similar butopposite e�ects. First, feedback is registered in its details. Therefore, the consequencesmight seem larger than they actually are, because when one looks at a failure from alow level, it appears to mean that the whole action fails. Secondly, people with a lowaction identity focus on the details of the action, and therefore their time estimation isnot adequate either. During the task, time appears to pass by more rapidly than itactually does (Lord and Levy, 1994). Moreover, focusing on the details may obscurethe link between the ongoing action and its overall context. This may reduce motiva-tion (Zimmerman and Kitsantas, 1997). These properties seem typical of pessimisticprocrastinators. Pessimists are afraid of failing and every failure may undermine theirself-con®dence further (Scheier and Carver, 1985). Moreover, they overestimate thetime needed to do a job (Lay, 1988). Finally, they seem to have high levels of testanxiety, which damages their motivation and persistence (Depreeuw and De Neve,1992). Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that pessimistic procrastinators su�erfrom chronically low action identities.

Overview of the hypotheses

We expected that there would be an interaction e�ect between optimism and procras-tination and no main e�ects of optimism and procrastination with regard to level ofthe action identity. More speci®cally, we expected that among optimists, procrasti-nators would have higher action identities than nonprocrastinators would. Amongpessimists, we expected the reverse pattern. Among nonprocrastinators, we expectedno di�erences between optimists and pessimists.



STUDY 1

In the ®rst study, we tested the hypothesis on a general level. We used a generalmeasure of procrastination covering several life domains. We also used a generalmeasure of action identity level, which gauges the inclination to have a high actionidentity in mind while performing an action in various life domains.

Method

Participants

Participants were 514 (239 men and 269 women) volunteering freshmen of the lawfaculty. They participated in one mass session during one of their lectures.

Instruments and procedure

We administered the instruments in the order we described them here. First, tomeasure the level of action identity as a trait, we translated Behavioral Identi®cationForm (BIF, 24 items) of Vallacher and Wegner (1989). Our translation had anacceptable internal consistency (a � 0.79). A typical item of the questionnaire is`painting your room'. Participants have to choose between `making the room lookfresh' (high) and àpplying brush strokes' (low). Second, to measure procrastinationwe administered Schouwenburg's (1994) Dutch translation of Lay's (1986) generalprocrastination scale (GPS, 20 items). A typical item of the questionnaire is À letter Iwrite may sit for days before I mail it'. The items are evaluated on a ®ve-point scalefrom àlmost never' to àlmost always'. The translation has a high internal consistency(a � 0.88 in Schouwenburg, 1994, and a � 0.88 in the present study). Finally,participants completed the Dutch translation by Vinck, Wels, Arickx and Vinck(1998) of Scheier and Carver's (1985) Life Orientation Test (LOT, eight items and four®ller items), which measures trait optimism versus pessimism. A typical item is Ì'm abeliever in the idea that `èvery cloud has a silver lining'' '. The items are evaluated ona ®ve-point scale ranging from àlmost never' to àlmost always'. The translation isinternally consistent (a � 0.80 in Vinck et al. (1998) and a � 0.81 in our sample).

Results

Typology

The LOT and the GPS were weakly interrelated (r � 0.16, p5 0.01, which is similarto the relation reported by Lay, 1988). The correlation between the LOT (measuringoptimism) and the GPS (measuring procrastination) was low enough to constructfour types. We split the sample into procrastinators and nonprocrastinators using thea priori cut-o� of level 3 (`sometimes') on a ®ve-point scale. This means thatparticipants were classi®ed as procrastinators if they said they procrastinated at leastsometimes (i.e. a score of 3 or more) on average. A similar cut-o� for optimismyielded highly unequal cell sizes. On average, people are slightly optimistic (see alsoLay, 1988; Scheier and Carver, 1985; Vinck et al., 1998). Therefore, we used the mean(M � 3.25) to split the sample into optimists and pessimists. The combination ofboth scales (LOT and GPS) resulted in the construction of four types: òptimistic



procrastinators' (n � 139), `pessimistic procrastinators' (n � 134), òptimistic non-procrastinators' (n � 152), and `pessimistic nonprocrastinators' (n � 89). The weakrelation between procrastination and optimism did not interfere with typeconstruction3.

Level of the action identity

The BIF (action identity level) was negatively related to the GPS (procrastinator,r � ÿ0.15, p5 0.01) and positively to the LOT (optimism, r � 0.15, p5 0.01). Asexpected, the interaction between optimism and procrastination was signi®cant(F(1,510) � 5.86, p5 0.02). Table 1 shows that pessimistic procrastinators had alower action identity than pessimistic nonprocrastinators. However, optimisticprocrastinators did not have a higher one than did nonprocrastinators. Indeed, themain e�ect of procrastination was signi®cant (F(1,510) � 21.37, p5 0.01). Overall,procrastinators had signi®cantly lower action identities than nonprocrastinators.Optimists had slightly higher action identities than pessimists, although the di�erencewas not signi®cant (F(1,510) � 3.51, p � 0.06). Table 1 reveals that this di�erencewas entirely due to the di�erence between optimistic and pessimistic procrastinators.A posteriori Tukey tests showed that only the pessimistic procrastinators di�eredsigni®cantly (at the 0.05 level) from the other types concerning their level of actionidentity.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to test a double hypothesis. We expected that relative tononprocrastinators, pessimistic procrastinators would have lower action identities todescribe their action. We also expected that relative to nonprocrastinators, optimistic

Table 1. The level of action identity as a function of procrastinationand optimism (with standard deviation between brackets)

Optimism

Procrastination

Low High

Optimistic 0.66a 0.63a 0.65(0.18) (0.17) (0.18)

Pessimistic 0.67a 0.56b 0.62(0.19) (0.19) (0.19)

0.67 0.59(0.18) (0.18)

a,bMeans with the same letter are not signi®cantly di�erent (read within columns).

3Procrastinators had a higher score on the GPS than nonprocrastinators (M � 3.46 and M � 2.61,respectively, F(1,510) � 876.7, p5 0.01). More importantly, they did not di�er on the optimism score(M � 3.02 and M � 3.05, F(1,510) � 1.38, p4 0.20). Optimists had higher scores on the LOT thanpessimists (M � 3.79 and M � 2.65, respectively, F(1,510) � 831.20, p5 0.01). Procrastinators wereslightly but signi®cantly less optimistic than nonprocrastinators (M � 3.18 and M � 3.26, respectively,F(1,510) � 3.99, p5 0.05), but this di�erence was too small to confound the types. Moreover, the analysisof variance with both factors as independent variables corrects for the e�ect of the other variable.



procrastinators would use higher action identities to describe their actions in general.Our data support only the ®rst part of the hypothesis. Pessimistic procrastination isrelated to low-level action identities. However, optimistic procrastination does notseem to follow from a chronically high action identity. Instead, procrastination,irrespective of type, seems related to low-level action identities. There are threepossible interpretations for the fact that the second part of the hypothesis was notsupported. First, our hypothesis concerning the optimistic procrastinators may bewrong. The level of action identity might be positively related to general adaptiveness,and therefore be negatively related to procrastination, irrespective of type. In this caseprocrastination might be the result of losing track of the general purpose of one'saction. This decreases motivation to persist or to initiate the action. In this scenario,the (weak) interaction e�ect we ®nd might be due to the fact that optimism is alsorelated to general adaptiveness (Flett et al., 1995). Therefore, the low action identitiesthat are typical of procrastinators might be attenuated for optimists. This interpreta-tion is actually a new hypothesis, which predicts a linear relation between procrastina-tion and the level of action identity. In the remainder, this hypothesis will be referredto as the linear hypothesis.

The second possible interpretation of our ®ndings is related to the fact that the BIF(Vallacher and Wegner, 1989) allows only two alternative identi®cations of theactions that are referred to in the items. The participant has to check either the high orthe low level. Possibly, the maladaptive high action identities we referred to in ourhypothesis may not be available as options in the questionnaire. Therefore, therelatively low scores of the optimistic procrastinators may be due to a ceiling e�ect.

The third possibility is that the hypothesis we outlined only applies to highlychallenging action domains. For instance, Vallacher and Wegner (1985) found thatparents who identi®ed their parenting actions by means of general descriptions (Ì'mpreparing my child for adult life') did worse on parenting than parents identifyingtheir parenting behaviour by means of down-to-earth identities (Ì'm preparing mychild for school'). Studying can be considered as a highly challenging task too,because it implies a lot of di�erent and sometimes di�cult actions. Therefore, aquestionnaire including very general descriptions might show the expected pattern foroptimists who postpone their academic duties.

The latter two interpretations are actually further speci®cations of our originalhypothesis, which we will refer to as the curvilinear hypothesis, because it holds thatprocrastination is curvilinearly related to the level of the action identity. To decidewhich of the hypotheses was the more valid one, we conducted a second study. Thistime, we con®ned our hypothesis to the educational context. To that purpose, weconstructed a questionnaire measuring identi®cations of study activities. In thisquestionnaire, we administered items with one marked pole instead of forced choiceitems. This allowed for testing the interpretation that our failure to ®nd the predictede�ect was due to the lack of maladaptive high action identities in the questionnaire weused in the ®rst study.

STUDY 2

The aim of this study was to confront the linear and the curvilinear hypotheses. Thelinear hypothesis relies on the ®ndings of the ®rst study. There, we found a main e�ect



of procrastination on the level of action identity. Procrastinators identi®ed theiractions with lower action identities than did nonprocrastinators. The di�erence wassmaller for optimists, but it was still there. It is possible that procrastination resultsfrom forgetting about the context of the action. For instance, procrastinators maylack an elaborate hierarchical goal structure, which motivates behaviour (Bandura,1991; Zimmerman, 1998). In this case, optimistic and pessimistic procrastinatorscould not be di�erentiated based on their action identity levels. The curvilinearhypothesis does expect a di�erentiation between the two types: in comparison withnonprocrastinators, optimistic and pessimistic procrastinators are expected to usehigh-level and low-level identities, respectively.

The second study di�ered from the ®rst one in that we not only measured the traitlevel of identity but also the way students identify their study activities. A furtheradaptation resulted from the fact that trait procrastination in general and procrastina-tion in academic tasks might not directly map onto each other. Actually, Vallerand(1997) reviewed evidence that typically, the relation between a general and thecorresponding speci®c trait is weak. Therefore, we administered an academic procras-tination scale instead of a general procrastination questionnaire.

To increase the validity of our results, we decided to include behavioural measuresof procrastination. More speci®cally, we asked students for their study-related plansfor the coming week. This allowed us to count the number of intentions. Moreover, itallowed us to measure the generality of their intended study activities (the level of theaction identity). Just like other actions, planned actions can be de®ned at several levelsof generality. For instance the intention Ì will study' is more general than theintention Ì will read chapter 8 of my history course'. The two hypotheses can thus betested at the intentional level too.

One week after having measured the students' intentions, we measured how manyof their intentions they had enacted. This information was used as a measure ofbehavioural procrastination and allowed us to test the curvilinear hypothesis in analternative way. If the curvilinear hypothesis is right, procrastination should berelated to the level of action identity in di�erent ways depending on the types. That is,among optimists, trait procrastination should lead to high action identities, whichshould result in behavioural procrastination. In contrast, among pessimists, traitprocrastination should be related to low action identities, which should result in morebehavioural procrastination. In other words, optimism should moderate the relationbetween trait procrastination, level of the action identity, and behavioural procras-tination. However, if the linear hypothesis holds, then procrastination (both the traitand the behaviour) should be related to a low (or a lack of a high) action identity, foroptimists as well as for pessimists.

Method

Participants and design

There were two sessions. During the ®rst session, the participants completed thequestionnaires and gave us their study plans for the coming week. During the secondsession, the participants checked (on their own schedule) whether or not they hadenacted their intentions. Forty-eight psychology freshmen cooperated in return for



course credit (eight males and 40 females). Forty-seven of them participated in thesecond session.

Instruments and procedure

As in the previous study, the LOT (a � 0.80; Scheier and Carver, 1985, translated byVinck et al., 1998) and the BIF (a � 0.70, Vallacher and Wegner, 1989) were admini-stered. Instead of Lay's GPS (1986), we applied an academic procrastination measure.We did so because this study concerns academic procrastination, which is notnecessarily strongly related to overall procrastination. We used a part of the VASOV(questionnaire for study management skills), a questionnaire that was validated in ourcentre on more than 1000 students (Depreeuw and Lens, in preparation). We selectedthe ten items with the highest loadings on the procrastination factor in their sample(a � 0.91). A typical item of this questionnaire is Ì start studying later than I hadintended to'. In our sample, the internal consistency of the ten items was acceptable(a � 0.82).

Furthermore, we constructed a questionnaire measuring the level of generality ofidenti®cation of study activities. This questionnaire was designed to tap into level ofidentity in the educational domain. First, we selected 25 possible identi®cations ofstudying from more than 30 identi®cations of study activities collected in a pilotstudy. Afterwards, four judges rated which items referred to high, intermediate, andlow levels of study identities. The identities that were agreed upon by at least three outof four judges were retained for our questionnaire. Before the ®nal factor analysis, weexcluded three items because of technical reasons. Twowere deleted because they wererarely chosen (`reciting my course', `preparing next week's lesson') and one because itloaded on all factors (`making use of my talents'). We theoretically distinguished threefactors: high, intermediate, and low levels of action identity. The ®rst a priori factorstressed the overall reason for studying and its future context, for instance `studying ismaking sure that I will pass the exams'. The second factor referred to studying onespeci®c course, for instance, `trying to master the course'. The third factor wasintended to refer to lower levels, for instance `marking important sentences'.

We then conducted a factor analysis that yielded four factors with eigenvaluesexceeding unity. We applied a VARIMAX rotation on the factors. Six items loadedon the high factor but three were deleted because there were high cross-loadings (seeTable 2, factor 1, items 1 to 3, a � 0.88). Second, the intermediate factor consisted ofitems 7 to 9 (a � 0.73, see Table 2, factor 2). Although we had expected item 6 to loadon this factor as well (`rehearsing the previous course'), it did not and therefore it wasdeleted from the factor score. Finally, the items referring to a low action identity fellinto two factors. The low1 factor referred to separate behaviours involved in severalstudy tasks (items 10±12). The internal consistency was unacceptably low: a � 0.52.The fourth factor, consisting of only two items, also referred to separate behaviours(low2, items 14, 15). Its internal consistency was also low: a � 0.64. The internalconsistency of both low factors is weak. This is not surprising because the items do notimply each other in the same way the items of the high factor do. Rather, they point topossible but di�erent details of studying behaviour. These factors will only be used forexploratory purposes here. Note that the order of presentation of the items in Table 2was used to increase clarity. It does not represent the actual item order used in thequestionnaire.



Furthermore, the participants had to ®ll in a study schedule for the coming week.Lay and Burns (1991) also measured actual study intentions but they asked theirparticipants to rate the number of hours they intended to study on average. In light ofthe distorted time estimates of procrastinators (Lay, 1988), this measure may bea�ected by one's inclination to procrastinate. To avoid this possible confound, weused a schedule that forced participants to explicitly state their intentions. Thisallowed us to count the number of planned study hours for them. The rows of ourschedule referred to time blocks of one hour (except for the time span between 24.00and 8.00, which was represented in only one block). The columns referred for the daysof the week. The ®rst day was the day after the ®rst session. The last day was the day ofthe second session (until the moment of the second session). The ®rst columnprovided an elaborate example. The participants were allowed to span several cellswith one intention. After one week, they were returned their schedule for the ®rstsession. They had to check `Y' for intentions they had performed, `P' for partiallyperformed intensions, `L' for intentions they had postponed (but performed beforethe second session) and `N' for intentions they had not performed yet by the time ofthe second session. If they had been studying something else ( for instance historyinstead of psychology), they were asked to mention this. If they studied something at amoment that di�ered from the planned moment, they were also asked to mention this.This allowed us to calculate the total number of hours studied and not only theintended hours studied.

The fact that they mentioned their intentions themselves allowed us to evaluate thegenerality of the intentions. We distinguished three levels: high (e.g., Ì will study'),

Table 2. Identi®cations of studying and their loadings on four factors

Items

Factor 1:reason forand e�ect ofstudyinghigh

Factor 2:studying onthe level ofthe courseintermediate

Factor 3:details ofstudyinglow1

Factor 4:parts ofstudyinglow2

1. Making sure I pass the exams 0.89o

2. Making sure I get my degree 0.84o

3. Trying to receive good grades 0.83o

4. Preparing for the exams 0.73 0.32 ÿ0.355. Ensuring my future 0.56 ÿ0.426. Rehearsing the previous course 0.44 0.357. Looking for examples to clarify

the theory0.81o

8. Trying to master the course 0.77o 0.319. Finding the essence of the course 0.74o

10. Reading a piece of text 0.74o

11. Looking up the meaning of adi�cult word

0.64o

12. Writing a paper 0.53o

13. Expanding my knowledge 0.38 0.4214. Reading through my notes 0.84o

15. Marking important sentences 0.83o

Eigenvalues 3.82 2.35 1.66 1.50Explained variance (%) 37.4 25.5 19.5 17.4

oItems that were retained in the four subscales.



intermediate (e.g., Ì will study philosophy'), and low (e.g., Ì will read chapter 8 of myhistory course'). Because the participants provided di�erent numbers of intentions,we calculated an average generality of intentions per participant.

Results

Typology

To evaluate the e�ect of procrastination and optimism on the dependent variables, weconducted an ANCOVA with optimism as a dichotomous independent variable andacademic procrastination as the covariate. We used ANCOVA instead of ANOVAwith procrastination and optimism as independent variables because of the smallercell size in this study. The advantage of this type of analysis is that it allowscalculation of correlations between the dependent variables and the procrastinationscore. The disadvantage is that, in the case of an interaction between optimism andprocrastination, the averages as a function of optimism may be biased (Stevens, 1996).However, because we were not interested in the main e�ect of optimism, thisdisadvantage was irrelevant for our purposes.

None of the dependent variables were reliably related to optimism. For clarity'ssake, we dropped the statistics related to optimism in the following section.

The level of action identity as a function of procrastination and optimism

First, we ran an ANCOVA with the trait action identi®cation level (BIF score) as adependent variable and optimism (high and low) and procrastination as the inde-pendent variables. The main e�ect of procrastination was not signi®cant (F(1,44)� 1.0, p4 0.30); nor was the interaction between optimism and procrastination(F(1,44)5 1).

Second, we ran four ANCOVAs with the factors referring to identities of studyactivities (sums of the items) as the dependent variables and optimism andprocrastination as the independent variables. The main e�ect of procrastination onthe high factor was signi®cant: F(1,44) � 6.44, p5 0.02. Procrastinators had lowerscores on the items referring to the broad context of their study activities (i.e., highidentities) than nonprocrastinators: r � ÿ0.41. The interaction between optimismand procrastination was not signi®cant (F(1,44) � 1.04, p4 0.30). These ®ndingsclearly support our linear hypothesis and are at odds with the curvilinear one. Themain e�ect of procrastination on both low factors was marginally signi®cant(F(1,44) � 3.05, p5 0.10, r � ÿ0.25 for low1, and F(1,44) � 2.08, p5 0.15,r � ÿ0.22 for low2). Procrastinators had lower scores on items referring to thedetails of studying than did nonprocrastinators. The interaction e�ects were notsigni®cant (both F5 1). These ®ndings do not support any of the hypotheses. Therewas no main e�ect of procrastination on the intermediate factor, with items referringto studying a speci®c course. The interaction was not signi®cant either (both F5 1).This is at odds with the curvilinear hypothesis.

Third, we ran an ANCOVA with the generality of the intentions as dependentvariables. The main e�ect of procrastination was signi®cant: F(1,43) � 5.26,p5 0.05. Procrastinators had more speci®c intentions than nonprocrastinators did:r � ÿ0.34. The interaction between optimism and procrastination was not signi®cant



(F5 1). These ®ndings again support the linear hypothesis and are at odds with thecurvilinear one.

Study intentions as a function of procrastination and optimism

There were two variables referring to study intentions. We counted the number ofintentions and the planned hours. Procrastination had no e�ect on the number ofintentions (F(1,43)5 1). The e�ect of procrastination on the number of plannedhours was only marginally signi®cant (F(1,43) � 2.92, p5 0.10). Procrastinatorsplanned to study slightly less than nonprocrastinators. The interaction betweenoptimism and procrastination did not have an e�ect on any of the two variables (bothF5 1). These ®ndings support the de®nition of procrastination.

Hours studied and behavioural procrastination as a function of procrastinationand optimism

We calculated the overall hours studied as a general measure of study intensity,regardless of intentions. Furthermore, we calculated two measures of behaviouralprocrastination. First, we calculated the number of intentions the student had notperformed, divided by the total number of intentions. This measure, behaviouralprocrastination 1, is most in line with Lay's de®nition of procrastination (see above).Second, we calculated the total hours studied in relation to the planned hours, beha-vioural procrastination 2. This measure steers clear of functional procrastinationbecause it allows students to substitute their old intentions for new ones (as long asthese are study intentions). Moreover, the second measure is sensitive to studyactivities that were not intended during the ®rst session. Finally, the e�ects of theindependent variables on the number of alternative study activities were also evalu-ated for exploratory reasons.

The e�ect of procrastination on hours studied was signi®cant: F(1,43) � 10.36,p5 0.01. Procrastinators studied signi®cantly less than nonprocrastinators:r � ÿ0.45. They also postponed a larger proportion of their intentions but thisdi�erence was only marginally signi®cant (F(1,43) � 3.36, p5 0.07, r � 0.28).Relative to the number of hours they were planning to study, procrastinators studiedless than nonprocrastinators (F(1,43) � 6.96, p5 0.02, r � ÿ0.37). These ®ndingssuggest that our measure of procrastination is valid. Finally, nonprocrastinatorsreplaced more of their intentions with other study intentions than did procrastinators(F(1,43) � 7.44, p5 0.01, r � ÿ0.38). The interactions between optimism andprocrastination were not signi®cant for any of the dependent variables (all F5 1).

Mediation analyses

If the curvilinear hypothesis applies, then the relation between academic and beha-vioural procrastination should be mediated by items referring to a high action identityamong optimists and by items referring to a low action identity among pessimists.More speci®cally, optimistic procrastinators should procrastinate because theyidentify their study activities at high levels relative to nonprocrastinators, whereasfor pessimists, the reversed pattern should apply. In contrast, the linear hypothesispredicts that the relation between academic and behavioural procrastination on the



one hand and the level of action identity on the other hand are similar for both typesof procrastinators. Actually, this comes down to a main e�ect of academic procras-tination on behavioural procrastination, and no interaction with optimism (seeabove).

Table 3 presents the correlation between hours studied and procrastination seenfrom several angles ( for the other behavioural indices, similar conclusions apply). Therows di�erentiate optimists from pessimists. The ®rst column shows the raw correla-tion. The second column represents the same correlation corrected for the score onthe items referring to a high level identity of study activities. In the third and fourthcolumns, one can ®nd the correlation corrected for both types of item referring to alow-level identity of study activities. The relation between hours studied and procras-tination cannot be explained by any of the items referring to level of action identity,because it remains signi®cant after all corrections. These ®ndings fail to support thecurvilinear hypothesis.

Discussion

The purpose of the second study was to confront our curvilinear hypothesis with ourinterpretation of the results of the ®rst study. The curvilinear hypothesis was thatoptimistic procrastinators would identify their actions at higher levels than non-procrastinators and that pessimistic procrastinators would identify their actions atlower levels than nonprocrastinators. In other words, we expected an interaction e�ectof optimism and procrastination on the generality of the action identity. From thispoint of view, the weakness of the interaction e�ect of the ®rst study might be due tothe general scope of the measures. Possibly, our original hypothesis only applies inchallenging life domains such as education. The linear hypothesis was that procras-tination might follow from an action identity that is too low, for optimistic as well asfor pessimistic procrastinators. In this case, we expected a main e�ect of level ofidentity on procrastination. In what follows, six ®ndings are discussed in relation totheir implications for both hypotheses.

Four ®ndings go against the curvilinear hypothesis. First, we had expected anegative relation between items referring to an intermediate level of identity andprocrastination. Second, the mediation analyses show that the correlation betweenacademic and behavioural procrastination cannot be explained by level of identity.For optimists, the relation is maintained if the score on the items referring to a highaction identity is controlled. For pessimists, the relation is maintained if the score onthe items referring to a low identity is partialled out. This suggests that pessimists andoptimists do not procrastinate because of di�erent action identities. Third, we ®nd

Table 3. The correlation between procrastination and hours studied for optimists andpessimists, and corrected for several items measuring the level of action identity

Uncorrectedcorrelations

Corrected forscore on thehigh items

Corrected forscore on the low

items (1)

Corrected forscores on thelow items (2)

Optimists (n � 24) ÿ0.50*** ÿ0.47** ÿ0.49*** ÿ0.44***Pessimists (n � 23) ÿ0.40** ÿ0.54*** ÿ0.31* ÿ0.44***p5 0.10; **p5 0.05; ***p5 0.01 (one-tailed).



that procrastinating students score lower on items referring to a high action identity.Fourth, the intentions of procrastinators (both pessimistic and optimistic) are morespeci®c than the intentions of nonprocrastinators. Optimistic and pessimistic procras-tinators do not di�er on these dimensions. The latter two ®ndings clearly support thelinear hypothesis.

Finally, two ®ndings are inconclusive because they do not support any of thehypotheses. Based on the curvilinear hypothesis, we expected that in relation to theglobal level of action identity of nonprocrastinators, the action identity level shouldbe higher for optimistic procrastinators and lower for pessimistic procrastinators.Based on the linear hypothesis, we expected that nonprocrastinators would havehigher levels than would procrastinators. There is no e�ect at all in our study.However, the di�erence between the results of the ®rst and the second study might bedue to the fact that in the ®rst study, procrastination referred to a general inclinationto postpone intentions, whereas in the second study, it referred to academic procras-tination only. The ®rst one is global and pertains to all life domains. The second iscontextual. Vallerand (1997) suggested that global and contextual measures are notalways strongly related. Moreover, procrastinators tend to have lower scores on theitems referring to low action identities than nonprocrastinators. This ®nding does notsupport the curvilinear hypothesis because optimistic and pessimistic procrastinatorsshow similar patterns. The ®nding does not support the linear hypothesis eitherbecause this hypothesis predicted that procrastinators should have higher scores onthese items than nonprocrastinators.

In sum, two out of six ®ndings clearly support the linear hypothesis and four®ndings go against the curvilinear hypothesis. The ®fth ®nding does not decidebetween the two, and the last one, although nonsigni®cant, is at odds with bothhypotheses. The verdict is simple: the curvilinear hypothesis did not survive thisempirical test (either). Although the second one does not perfectly match our dataeither, it is the one that needs further elaboration. Procrastinators apparently havefewer high action identities to describe their study activities (i.e., they lack a broadperspective), seem to have more speci®c intentions, and do not have lower scores onthe factor that identi®es study activities at an intermediate level.

The main concern with the validity of the alternative hypothesis is the ®nding thatprocrastinators tend to have lower scores on items referring to a low-level identitythan nonprocrastinators. This would mean that nonprocrastinators describe theirstudy activities with very general as well as with very speci®c descriptions. A possibleinterpretation for this ®nding is that nonprocrastinators are able to focus on thedetails (i.e. concentrate) and simultaneously have some encompassing, supportinggeneral action de®nitions available when they have troubles concentrating on theirtask. For instance, they might concentrate on the text they are reading but wheneverthey face di�culties and feel the desire to quit, they resort to higher action identitiessuch as `making sure I pass the exams' to persist. This interpretation is in line withZimmerman's (1998) statement that self-regulating students have elaboratedhierarchical goal structures.

However, the tendency of nonprocrastinators to think of items referring to detailsas more representative of their study activities than procrastinators do, might alsodepend on the questionnaire used. For instance, one `low' item `looking up themeaning of a di�cult word' is very speci®c but procrastinators might never engage inthat type of action. They might just read on without knowing the meaning of the



di�cult word, for instance because of time pressure. If this is true, out items referringto low levels might confound the actual occurrences of some actions with theidenti®cations of study activities. This problem is not so easily solved, because allspeci®c descriptions refer to small behavioural units, some of which may never beperformed by procrastinators. This confound may also partially explain the lowinternal consistency of the two low factors. In future research, the items of the lowfactor should be con®ned to behaviours that are absolutely required for studying.

Before proceeding with the general discussion, we need to discuss the relation ofthese ®ndings to Gollwitzer's (1993) theorizing and ®ndings about the bene®cial e�ectof specifying intentions. At ®rst sight, our ®nding that speci®c intentions are typicalof procrastination is at odds with the ®ndings reported by Gollwitzer and colleagues.They (Gollwitzer, 1993; Gollwitzer and BrandstaÈ tter, 1997) reported that speci®cintentions are more likely to be enacted than are general intentions. Sheeran andOrbell (1999, note 1, p. 351) pointed out that there are two types of speci®city. The®rst type is situational speci®city. For instance, `Tomorrow evening at eight PM, whenI'm sitting at my desk, I will study' is more (situationally) speci®c than Ì will study',because the situation in which the action is planned is speci®ed. Gollwitzer andBrandstaÈ tter (1997) explained the positive e�ect of (situational) speci®city by theprocess they call ìnstant habit'. When the speci®ed occasion occurs, the behaviour isperformed automatically because it is linked to the clearly speci®ed situational cuesthat are easily perceived. However, our method did not measure situational speci®ca-tion but even partially obscured it because we o�ered a ready made time schedule. Byspeci®c intentions, we refer to behavioural speci®city (which is the second type ofspeci®city, Sheeran and Orbell, 1999, note 1, p. 351). The evidence about the e�ects ofbehavioural speci®city is less clear. Although Gollwitzer and BrandstaÈ tter (1997)suggested that specifying behaviour and specifying situation have similar bene®ciale�ects on goal achievement, they only tested that specifying situations was helpful.They also suggested that their speci®city is not the speci®city that is referred to by self-control theorists (Gollwitzer and BrandstaÈ tter, 1997, p. 197). We suggest thatbehavioural speci®city might lead to less ¯exibility. For instance, when a student withthe intention `to read chapter eight of history' ®nds out that she has left her notes athome, she cannot enact her intention. She might then do something more attractive.In contrast, a student with the intention `to study history', may start reading otherparts of the course when she ®nds out she has left some notes at home. She can moreeasily substitute the new but related intention for the old one. We indeed found thatnonprocrastinators (who have more general intentions) replace their intentions morereadily with other study intentions than do procrastinators.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The original purpose of the two studies was to ®nd ways to distinguish optimistic andpessimistic procrastinators from each other. More speci®cally, we suggested thatprocrastination might be the result of di�erent processes depending on whether theprocrastinator was either an optimistic or a pessimist. We proposed that pessimisticprocrastination might follow from chronically low levels of action identity, whereasoptimistic procrastination might follow from chronically high levels. In the ®rst study,this hypothesis was tested on a general level. The data supported the claim that



pessimistic procrastinators had lower action identities than nonprocrastinators.However, optimistic procrastinators were also found to have rather low levels ofaction identity.

The ®ndings of study 1 resulted in the alternative hypothesis (i.e., the linearhypothesis) that procrastination in general follows from low-level identities. In thesecond study the empirical evidence put further doubt on the curvilinear hypothesis:again, optimistic procrastinators could not be distinguished from pessimistic procras-tinators concerning their action identities. In contrast, the data supported the linearhypothesis quite well. Procrastinators had more speci®c intentions than nonprocras-tinators, they had lower scores on the items referring to the broader context ofstudying, and did not di�er from nonprocrastinators on the items referring tointermediate-level identities. These ®ndings are in line with the ®ndings of the ®rststudy and with the linear hypothesis. A slight adaptation is required, however.Procrastination does not seem to follow from a low action identity per se, but ratherfrom a lack of high action identities. That is, procrastinators lack a broad perspectiveon their study activities. The data of study 1 could not di�erentiate between these twoslightly di�erent versions, because the level of action identity was measured on onlyone dimension. Low scores could have resulted from either a lack of high-levelidentities or from genuine low identities. For the generality of the intention (measuredin study 2), the same reasoning applies. The di�erence only came to the fore when lowand high factors were evaluated orthogonally. Then it appeared that procrastinatorsscored low on items referring to high action identities but that they did not score highon items referring to low identities. Therefore, the data are in line with the hypothesisthat procrastination follows from a lack of high-level action identities. This formula-tion is also consistent with all ®ndings based on unidimensional action identity scores.

Our ®ndings might also be integrated within the Big-Five framework. Schouwen-burg and Lay (1995) found that low scores on the conscientiousness factor of the Big-Five framework and all its facets were strongly predictive of high scores on Lay'sGPS. Moreover, impulsiveness (which is a facet of Neuroticism) was also substan-tially related to trait procrastination. Conscientiousness and Lack of Impulsivenessboth refer to behaviours that are guided by mental representations of anticipatedfuture states such as goals (negative Impulsiveness, Achievement Striving, Self-Discipline) or duties and norms (Dutifulness, Order, Deliberation). That is, conscien-tious people and people who are not impulsive seem to be aware of the consequencesof their deeds. In other words, they frame their action in a broader context, or theydispose of high action identities to describe what they are doing. For instance, thefacet Deliberation directly refers to taking into account other possibilities than theimmediately present one. This implies that people high on this trait are able to look attheir action from di�erent sides. Likewise, the facet dutifulness implies that the personis aware of a duty, which also requires that the immediate situation is transcended.Therefore, it is possible that level of identity, or rather the availability of high actionidentities, is an important characteristic of conscientious people.

The reader might wonder what was wrong with our curvilinear hypothesis. It wasbased on research data but it did very poorly in the presented studies. The maindi�erence between the reviewed ®ndings and the ®ndings of the present study was themoment of measuring the action identity. In Vallacher et al. (1989), the action identitywas measured immediately before the action was performed. In Dewitte and Lens(1999), it was even measured during the execution of an action. In contrast, in the



present studies, it was measured as a trait (the BIF in study 1 and 2), as a contextualhabit (the identi®cations of study activities in study 2), or as an intention (in study 2).It is possible that the function of action identities is di�erent depending on whetherthe action is ongoing or not. If the action is not ongoing, it may be adaptive to knowthe context of an action and perceive it in relation to other major projects. High levelsalso allow some ¯exibility, which might enhance adaptiveness to changing circum-stances (see the discussion of the e�ect of the speci®city of intentions). In contrast, ifthe action is ongoing, more speci®c action identities might be more adaptive when theaction is not well mastered by the individual. In tasks that require sustained con-centration, high action identities that point to the context might divert attention fromthe task itself. In other words, high level identities might enhance task initiation, butmight hinder task execution. This distinction is reminiscent of Heckhausen's (1991,see also Gollwitzer, 1990) distinction between predecisional and postdecisionalmental processes. In the predecisional phases, individuals take into account theconsequences of an action to evaluate their importance, whereas after they havedecided, they focus on the task itself. Further research is currently going on to testwhether the curvilinear hypothesis would do a better job if it is evaluated during astudy task instead of long before its enactment.

The ®nding that procrastinators lack high action identities might also suggest waysto overcome procrastination. Students lacking such a broad perspective on theiractions might be oblivious to the reason for engaging in the task. This becomescritical if they do not like what they are engaged in. During these moments of dislike,boredom, or di�culty a high action identity might help them to overcome theinclination to stop and do something more attractive. If the study activities areidenti®ed with a high action identity, such as `passing the exams', these moments ofdoubt may be overcome more smoothly. If these high identities are not readilyavailable, the individual is likely to turn to something else. High action identities maythus enhance persistence (see also Dewitte and Lens, 1999).

How can people be brought to describe their actions in broader terms than theyusually do, especially in di�cult circumstances? One way to do this is telling them theconsequences or e�ects of what they are doing. However, these strategies, whichessentially o�er extrinsic motives for engaging in the action, have been shown toundermine intrinsic motivation, especially if they a�ect perceptions of autonomy(Deci and Ryan, 1985). They do, moreover, not stimulate the development of self-regulation, because the individual keeps relying on others. Kuhl (1994) suggested thatover-control might debilitate the normal development of self-regulation and result inhigh levels of procrastination. Thus, to avoid perceptions of external control, the highaction identities must grow òut' of the behavioural repertoire. Teachers can at bestsuggest slightly higher action identities step by step and stimulate behaviouralreintegration.

To conclude, the present study shows that procrastination is related to a lack of abroad action perspective on behaviours. Apparently, this holds in general and inparticular in the educational context. This is also represented in the study intentionsof procrastinators, which are more speci®c than those of nonprocrastinators. Thisconclusion applies to both optimistic and pessimistic procrastinators. We were notable to distinguish the two types concerning their action identities. This means thatinterventions a�ecting the action identity might apply to both types of procrastinator.Further research is needed to ®nd ways to construct higher action identities.



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The contribution of the ®rst author was supported by a grant of the Fund forScienti®c Research (Flanders, Belgium). The authors wish to thank Filip Boen, LynCorno, and two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments on earlier versions ofthis paper.

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Procrastinators lack a broad action perspective