Temporal discounting predicts procrastination in the real world.

Autor: Zhang PY; Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York City, 10003, USA. pz580@nyu.edu., Ma WJ; Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York City, 10003, USA.; Department of Psychology, New York University, New York City, 10003, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Scientific reports [Sci Rep] 2024 Jun 25; Vol. 14 (1), pp. 14642. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jun 25.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-65110-4
Abstrakt: People procrastinate, but why? One long-standing hypothesis is that temporal discounting drives procrastination: in a task with a distant future reward, the discounted future reward fails to provide sufficient motivation to initiate work early. However, empirical evidence for this hypothesis has been lacking. Here, we used a long-term real-world task and a novel measure of procrastination to examine the association between temporal discounting and real-world procrastination. To measure procrastination, we critically measured the entire time course of the work progress instead of a single endpoint, such as task completion day. This approach allowed us to compute a fine-grained metric of procrastination. We found a positive correlation between individuals' degree of future reward discounting and their level of procrastination, suggesting that temporal discounting is a cognitive mechanism underlying procrastination. We found no evidence of a correlation when we, instead, measured procrastination by task completion day or by survey. This association between temporal discounting and procrastination offers empirical support for targeted interventions that could mitigate procrastination, such as modifying incentive systems to reduce the delay to a reward and lowering discount rates.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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