Extant research has consistently demonstrated that negative perfectionism is an important driver of procrastination. However, existing studies suffer from several salient limitations, such as an inadequacy in understanding its mediating mechanism, and the lack of an overarching theoretical framework. Accordingly, the present study adopts the ego depletion theory to investigate how and under what conditions negative perfectionism leads to procrastination. Specifically, we propose that fear of failure and ego depletion serially mediate the effect of negative perfectionism on procrastination, and that cognitive flexibility moderates this chain mediating effect. A three-wave survey consisting of 490 participants, in which negative perfectionism was measured in the first survey, fear of failure and ego depletion were measured in the second, and procrastination was measured in the last survey, lends support to all of our hypotheses. Specifically, our results indicate that (a) negative perfectionism influences procrastination through the chain mediating effect of fear of failure and ego depletion; (b) cognitive flexibility moderates the effect of fear of failure on ego depletion in that the effect is weaker when cognitive flexibility is high rather than low; and (c) cognitive flexibility moderates the chain mediating effect of negative perfectionism on procrastination, such that this chain mediation is weaker when cognitive flexibility is high rather than low. Our findings are discussed in terms of the theoretical contribution to reveal the mechanism by which negative perfectionism results in negative effects from the novel perspective of ego depletion.

Early childhood development intervention has gained considerable achievements in eliminating intergenerational transmission of poverty in rural areas. Paying further attention to rural children’s community inclusion can also promote the sustainable development of the village. However, there is a lack of systematic theoretical constructs on the village inclusion of rural children. In this study, an attempt was made to explore the problem mechanism and solution strategy of community inclusion of rural children using a grounded theory approach of in-depth interviews. Seventeen parents of children in a national-level poverty-stricken county in Inner Mongolia of China were investigated, adopting the strategy of intensity sampling. The results revealed that (1) the content of rural children’s activities demonstrates enhanced participation in the virtual environment and weakened participation in the real community environment. That is, the activities are characterized by more virtualization and individualization. (2) Rural parents and community peers are two major channels for children’s community inclusion, while both the community peer environment and parental community participation show a weakening trend. This may be an important reason for the virtualization and individualization of the children’s psychological development environment. (3) Developmental intervention programs for rural children in poverty-stricken areas should focus on the reconstruction of children’s community peer environment, encourage the community participation of parents, and fully mobilize local-based educational resources.