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22-05-2020 | Original Article

I could do it now, but I’d rather (forget to) do it later: examining links between procrastination and prospective memory failures

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 4/2021

Abstract

Prospective memory (PM) represents the ability to remember to perform planned actions after a certain delay. As previous studies suggest that even brief task-delays can negatively affect PM performance, the current study set out to examine whether procrastination (intentionally delaying task execution despite possible negative consequences) may represent a factor contributing to PM failures. Specifically, we assessed procrastination (via a standardized questionnaire as well as an objective behavioral measure) and PM failures (via a naturalistic PM task) in 92 young adults. Results show that participants’ self-reports as well as their actual procrastination behavior predicted the number of PM failures, corroborating the impact of procrastination on PM. Subsequent cluster analyses suggest three distinct procrastination profiles (non-procrastinators, conscious procrastinators and unconscious procrastinators), providing new conceptual insights into different mechanisms of how procrastinating may lead to forgetting to perform planned tasks.

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An exploratory factor analysis on the PPS self-reports revealed that item 4 did not distinguish between the two dimensions of procrastination (high factor loadings on voluntary (= 0.44) and observed delay (= 0.49); for details, see Zuber et al. (2020). Consequently, item 4 was removed from subsequent analyses.

We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this possibility.

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Titel: I could do it now, but I’d rather (forget to) do it later: examining links between procrastination and prospective memory failures
Publicatiedatum: 22-05-2020
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research / Uitgave 4/2021
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01357-6

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