A meta-analytically derived nomological network of procrastination

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1410 W. van Eerde / Personality and Individual Differences 35 (2003) 1401–1418 with the fact that they procrastinated, they may not give full attention to the task, possibly affecting performance negatively. As not everyone is equally affected emotionally by procrastination (cf. Milgram & Naaman, 1996), those who are not affected should not be performing worse. One of the limitations is that the performance measures were necessarily restricted to student performance. In other contexts, the results may be different. This calls for research on a wider range of behaviours. The influence of procrastination on some everyday behaviours have been studied, such as returning surveys (Ferrari, 1992), or cashing in gift certificates (Ferrari, 1993). But there are no studies that related procrastination to work performance. Another limitation may be the scales used in some of the research that may have confounded procrastination with the feelings about procrastination, such as the Procrastination Assessment Scale for Students (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984) in particular (cf. Milgram & Naaman, 1996), so that the correlations of procrastination with affect may be somewhat inflated (see van Eerde, in press). The nonexperimental designs do not allow a conclusion as to whether procrastination is preceded or followed by, confounded with, or spuriously correlated with, a certain variable. A more general limitation involves the use of self-reports. If one admits to doing these so-called irrational things, perhaps admitting to procrastination is more likely. In most of the studies included, common method bias may have caused the correlations to be inflated. These limitations may have been reflected in the effect sizes between procrastination and neuroticism, trait anxiety, and state anxiety, which are highly similar in magnitude. The research in this review has been conducted from a dispositional point of view, and the interaction with situational or other important variables could not be assessed. It is unclear to what extent the effect sizes may generalize to tasks other than studying and to other populations than students. As stated before in the model, the psychologically relevant dimensions of situations that trigger procrastination should be studied. Some authors addressed this issue by exploring the dimensions relevant to task perception, in particular task aversiveness (e.g. Blunt & Pychyl, 2000;Lay, 1992;Milgram, Marchevsky, & Sadeh, 1995), but these studies are the exception rather than the rule, and there are not enough to combine meta-analytically. Overall, the correlations give a dysfunctional view on procrastination, but given the limitations of previous studies, can anything be concluded from this meta-analysis on how procrastination affects performance? The high negative correlation between procrastination and conscientiousness and self-efficacy may indicate that procrastination is a predictor of poor performance, because conscientiousness (Barrick & Mount, 1991) has been demonstrated to be a predictor of performance at work, and self-efficacy has been shown to be positively related to performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). However, the relation may also be in the opposite direction: poor performance may lead to anxiety, depression, lower self-efficacy and conscientiousness and a higher degree of procrastination to escape from the negative consequences. Also, ability can be expected to moderate the relation: procrastination may have a different effect on performance for individuals with high ability on the specific task than for individuals with low ability. Additionally, the same type of moderators may apply to conscientiousness and procrastination, that is, the extent to which a job requires accuracy and punctuality. For example, in professions such as accountancy, missing deadlines may have important financial consequences, whereas it may be less relevant in creative professions, where a good solution may be more important than getting it
W. van Eerde / Personality and Individual Differences 35 (2003) 1401–1418 1411 exactly on time. There is some empirical indication that this argument is supported within the job of scientist. Feist (1998) concluded in his meta-analysis on personality and creativity that scientists are more conscientious than nonscientists. That is, there are distinctions between those who become scientists and those who do not. However, he also concluded that within the profession, less creative scientists, compared with more creative ones ‘‘...are more conscientious, conventional, and closed-minded’’ (p. 300). Also, conscientiousness was negatively related to behavioural flexibility (Griffin & Hesketh, 2001), which may not be useful in all performance situations, particularly those that require innovative solutions. Also, other studies have found a negative relation between creative behaviour and conscientiousness (Wolfradt & Pretz, 2001), although one study only found it for persons with high creative ability (King, McKee-Walker, & Broyles, 1996). Perhaps procrastination is functional to creativity because it may serve to incubate ideas. This may be enhanced by the paradoxical effect found for thought suppression (Wegner, 1994), i.e. actively avoiding or not thinking of something, may lead to intensified thinking of these suppressed thoughts, which may ultimately lead to better ideas. Another functional aspect of procrastination may also be the temporary relief from pressures experienced, useful to balancing one’s energy. Tice and Baumeister’s study (1997) showed that procrastination had short term benefits and long term costs in terms of health. Early in the semester, symptom checklists, weekly measures of stress, and recorded visits to health-care professionals were correlated negatively with procrastination, but late in the semester, the correlations were positive. On the other hand, the students’ grades during the semester were all correlated negatively with procrastination, and in total, total health was worse for those who procrastinated, and it may be concluded that the early benefits were outweighed by the later costs. The authors concluded that further work is needed, because those who admit they procrastinated were self-selected. For example, it is possible that those who admit that they procrastinate may be more emotional or anxious to start with. Only random assignment of people in conditions that allow them to procrastinate can rule out this alternative explanation. Some more recent studies have broadened the scope and addressed procrastination in different designs, such as longitudinally over the phases in personal projects (Blunt & Pychyl, 2000), or over the duration of a semester (Tice & Baumeister, 1997;Wang & Jentsch, 1998). Also, some experiments have been conducted that demonstrated that procrastination may be evoked experimentally (e.g. Ferrari & Tice, 2000;Senécal, Lavoie, & Koestner, 1997), but these are difficult to combine, as each experiment addresses a different question. A different type of research on procrastination is needed that should pay attention to the processes involved in procrastination, as well as the relevant dimensions of the situation, its development over time, and what task and social influences may play a role in dysfunctional and functional effects. Diary studies may be used in studying procrastination (cf. Scher & Ferrari, 2000), with distinct advantages such as the relative short interval between events and reporting, the possibility of studying processes over time, and of analysing phenomena at the within-person level, in addition to the between-person level. More useful insights can be gained by using different methods, such as event sampling (Pychyl, Lee, Thibodeau, & Blunt, 2000). Pychyl et al.’s study provides interesting information on how the respondents experienced their tasks over time while procrastinating. In future research, the emotion associated with procrastination may be organized in a theoretical framework of affective well-being. Daniels (2000) presented and supported empirically a
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A meta-analytically derived nomological network of procrastination

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