Abstract
Although relevant nomothetically-based personality literature has made great advances in recent years correlating traits to measures of procrastination, little is known about the specific irrational beliefs of procrastinators, especially when they are actively avoiding tasks or situations. Based on theories from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), it was hypothesized that compared to non-procrastinators, college student academic procrastinators would show greater self depreciation, greater other depreciation, greater life condition depreciation, and a lower frustration tolerance. Academic procrastination was operationally defined by quartile distributions on two self- report measures and three classroom-based assignments. Procrastinators and non-procrastinating students were given instructions to write approximately 500 words about their thoughts and feelings while they were in the process of actively putting off a specific, real event. While actually procrastinating, students logged on to a web site and made text entries describing what was going through their minds. Data were analyzed with the Psychiatric Content and Diagnosis Program Version 3 (PCAD 3; Gottschalk and Bechtel in Psychiatric content and diagnosis: the PCAD 3. GB Software, Brighton, MI, 2007). Procrastinators and non-procrastinators differed on relevant PCAD scales, supporting the hypotheses derived from REBT theory. Treatment implications and directions for future research are discussed.
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Notes
In a pilot study we found four factors, one of which appeared to be a general factor, two appeared to be method factors and the last factor was uninterruptable. The first factor in this pilot sample accounted for about 48% of the variance. Factor loadings combining questionnaire and behavioral data may be influenced by when in the academic year data was collected and whether students have received recent positive or negative feedback about classroom performance.
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McCown, B., Blake, I.K. & Keiser, R. Content Analyses of the Beliefs of Academic Procrastinators. J Rat-Emo Cognitive-Behav Ther 30, 213–222 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-012-0148-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-012-0148-6