Decisional Procrastination in Academic Settings: The Role of Metacognitions and Learning Strategies

Abstract

Nowadays, university students suffer from a broad range of problems, such as educational underachievement or the inability to control themselves, that lead to procrastination as a consequence. The present research aimed at analyzing the determinants of decisional procrastination among undergraduate students and at assessing a path model in which self regulated learning strategies mediated the relationship between metacognitive beliefs about procrastination and decisional procrastination. 273 students from Southern Italy filled out a questionnaire composed by: the socio-demographic section, the Metacognitive Beliefs About Procrastination Questionnaire, the procrastination subscale of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire, and the Anxiety, the Time Management, and the Information Processing subscales of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory. Results showed that the relationship between negative and positive metacognitive beliefs about procrastination and decisional procrastination was mediated only by time management and anxiety. Such findings underlined the crucial role played by learning strategies in predicting the tendency to delay decisional situations and in mediating the relationship between metacognitive beliefs about procrastination and decisional procrastination.

Trait Procrastination and Mobile Phone Addiction Among Chinese College Students: A Moderated Mediation Model of Stress and Gender

“…Procrastination is defined as "voluntarily delay of an intended action despite knowing to be worse off for the delay" (Steel, 2007). When it developed into a dispositional response to tasks that are perceived to be difficult, aversive, or lacking an immediate reward, procrastination can be viewed as a generalized personality trait (Steel and Ferrari, 2013;Sirois, 2014;Kroese and de Ridder, 2015;de Palo et al, 2017), and determines procrastination behaviors (Howell et al, 2006;de Palo et al, 2016).…”

Young University Students’ Academic Self-Regulation Profiles and Their Associated Procrastination: Autonomous Functioning Requires Self-Regulated Operations

“…Even though decisional procrastination has been linked with personal aspects of character (rather than context), explanations have also included aspects like the need for cognition and excessive (metacognitive) clutter, that distracts from decision making (Ferrari et al, 2018). In this regard, self-regulated learning strategies have been found to play critical mediation roles between people's beliefs about procrastination and decisional procrastination (De Palo et al, 2017), suggesting that, even if not the root of the problem, self-regulation strategiesespecially time management -may be key in fostering its prevention. Furthermore, excessive meta-cognition or clutter may be responsible for decisional procrastination, thus, it has been reported that decisional procrastination could be alleviated by attention control (Fernie et al, 2016).…”

Big Five, Self-Regulation, and Coping Strategies as Predictors of Achievement Emotions in Undergraduate Students

“…The behavioral study of the learning process in university students has traditionally focused on analyzing cognitive and metacognitive processes to explain optimal learning and achievement [1][2][3]. The prevailing psychological paradigm, however, has reoriented research interest toward the study of emotional processes, and the analysis of personality and emotional factors has become important [4,5].…”