It's an old story - transgression, acknowledgement or confession, forgiveness, redemption. Does it work with procrastination? It should. According to the Roman Catholic Church, slothfulness is one of the seven deadly sins. Is forgiveness the road to redemption for our sins of omission - the tasks left undone?
Recent research indicates this might be the case for academic procrastination, at least for women. I've just finished editing a paper that one of our graduate students, Shannon Bennett, a colleague, Dr. Michael Wohl, and I at Carleton University are about to submit for review. We presented the findings at the recent meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Boston. The collaboration has been very fruitful. Michael studies forgiveness (among other things like gambling). Shannon has completed studies with both of us, and brought the forgiveness literature together with procrastination to frame an interesting question.
If we self-forgive after we procrastinate,
do we procrastinate less the next time
we face a similar task?
There are three essential parts to self-forgiveness. First of all, one must acknowledge the commission of an objective wrong and accept responsibility for that wrong. Secondly, one must then experience feelings of guilt and regret. Finally, one must overcome these feelings (i.e., self-forgiveness), and, in doing so, experience a motivational change away from self-punishment toward self-acceptance. For example, results of recent research by my co-author Michael Wohl showed that for people who experienced the unwanted end to a romantic relationship, increases in self-blame predicted an increase in depressive feelings. However, self-forgiveness was also involved; self-forgiveness reduced negative feelings toward the self. Importantly, self-forgiveness also accompanies a resolution to change one's behavior and act differently in the future.
In our current study, we argue that self-forgiveness for procrastinating may play a role in helping people overcome the negative effects of procrastination and encourage a change in behavior. If procrastination is viewed as a transgression against the self and results in negative feelings such as guilt, forgiving oneself for procrastinating should reduce this feeling. By reducing emotional distress associated with procrastination, the individual becomes less likely to avoid the stimulus associated with the feelings in the first place (i.e., studying for an exam). Moreover, because self-forgiveness is typically accompanied by a vow to change one's behavior in the future, this encourages the individual to engage in approach behaviors rather than behaviors motivated by avoidance. Thus self-forgiving for procrastinating may make it less likely that the individual will be motivated to avoid unpleasant tasks like studying and more likely that he or she will approach success by procrastinating less in the future.
Shannon's findings are intriguing.
Gender made a difference.
Shannon collected data twice from a group of first-year students just before they completed two successive mid-term examinations. This allowed her to measure a few things twice, namely: procrastination on studying for the exam, perceptions on how much procrastination affected performance on the exam, mood (happy, sad, guilty, etc.), self-forgiveness for procrastination at Time 1 and grades (she also got information about their satisfaction with grades and other things, but the real story is around self-forgiveness and procrastination).
In the sessions immediately before the two midterm exams, self-forgiveness was measured with three items (we limited these measures to a few items so as not to take up time from the exam). These items were:
- I dislike myself for procrastinating
- I criticize myself because of my tendency to procrastinate, and
- I put myself down because of my tendency to procrastinate.
Items were anchored at 1 (strongly disagree) and 7 (strongly agree). Each item was then reverse-scored so that higher scores indicated greater self-forgiveness.
Procrastination was also measured using a 3-item measure. Participants rated how strongly they agreed with the statements:
- I put off studying until the last minute
- I delayed preparing for the exam by doing other, less important things instead, and
- I began studying much later than I intended to
From 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Higher scores indicated greater levels of procrastination.
Not surprisingly, she found that both males and females in her sample procrastinated on studying (long live student life and the all-nighter, right!?), and this procrastination was related to lower grades, unhappier moods, and... self-forgiveness.
The gender differences were interesting. Females reported planning to study longer for the second exam than the males did, although this intention was evidently not acted upon, as they did not differ from the males in the number of hours they actually studied for the exam. Moreover, although males and females did not differ in the amount of procrastination they engaged in, or their performance on the exams, females reported significantly higher beliefs that procrastinating had affected their performance than the males and experienced significantly more negative emotions about the first exam than males.
Given these gender differences, Shannon conducted the rest of the analyses separately for males and females. Her interest was in predicting procrastination at Time 2 - that is, preparation for the second exam. After taking into account the baseline procrastination indicated by procrastination for the first exam, nothing else predicted the males procrastination for the second exam. Although they did self-forgive for procrastination after the first exam, it didn't predict anything about their procrastination on the next exam.
In contrast, for females, what predicted procrastination on examination preparation at Time 2 was self-forgiveness for earlier procrastination, but only if it was a moderate or high amount of procrastination earlier in the term (for those of you who are statistically inclined, this means the interaction in the regression analysis was significant).
In other words, females who procrastinated quite a bit on the first midterm and forgave themselves procrastinated less on the second exam. Transgression, self-forgiveness, redemption.
Why the gender difference? Based on previous research we've done, we think it may be explained by self-worth. Procrastination is related to self-worth or self-esteem for females but not males. So, to the extent that procrastination threatens sense of self, there is more of a transgression against self, more need for self-forgiveness and more of what I'm loosely calling "redemption."
What else might explain these gender differences? Why doesn't self-forgiveness predict less procrastination for males in this academic context? Your turn . . . what do you think?
Too Many Variables
Could we assume that from the onset, females are more concerned with academic standing than males? While self-forgiveness may motivate female students to assume greater responsibility for positive outcomes on exam 2, possibly these students seek the greater correlation between exam performance and procrastination than do males. (Consider, for instance, recent research that casts females in the "folk psychology" generalization and males in the mechanical end of the spectrum.) It could be that the male student predicted better performance despite procrastination due to greater confidence in self and less understanding of the psychological connection between hours of study and exam performance. Or it could be as simple as the fact that males may feel less social pressure to study and more social pressure to socialize than do females, who in our culture are expected to party less, drink less, tend to not participate in as many extracurricular activities such as sports, and may not be expected to maintain a profession as well as attend school. There could be far too many variables to effectively state the gender differences are primarily due to a different take on procrastination.