“I’ll Worry About It Tomorrow” – Fostering Emotion Regulation Skills to Overcome Procrastination

Abstract

Procrastination remains an omnipresent phenomenon impeding especially students’ academic performance and well-being. Preliminary findings suggest that procrastination emerges due to dysfunctional emotion regulation efforts to regulate aversive emotions. This study’s objective was to clarify whether the enhancement of general adaptive emotion regulation skills reduces subsequent procrastination. For the purpose of this study, data from a two-armed randomized controlled trial (RCT) with (N = 148) university students, comprising an active intervention (IG) and a passive wait-list control (WLC) group, was collected. Participants of the intervention group were provided with an online emotion regulation training over a period of 9 weeks. The results showed that the enhancement of general emotion regulation skills significantly reduced subsequent procrastination behavior within the IG as compared to the untreated WLC. Moreover, subsequent mediation analyses revealed that the reduction of procrastination was significantly mediated by the increase in general ER skills. The present results suggest that trainings which enhance general ER skills are an appropriate measure to reduce procrastination behavior among university students. The practical value of ER training interventions, particularly for student populations, is discussed.

Neuro-psicopatología y procrastinación.

“…Ambas podrían representar las dos vías neurales subyacentes al impacto marcadamente inverso de la escrupulosidad sobre la procrastinación, y las dos se asocian positivamente con el grado de conciencia. (34) La mejora de las habilidades generales para regular las emociones parece eficaz en reducir el posterior comportamiento procrastinador (35) . Asimismo, hay intervenciones favorables no sanitarias apoyadas en métodos que implementan la llamada "conciencia plena" o mindfulness (36,37) , y algunas otras prácticas relativamente próximas como el yoga.…”

The mediating role of resilience between emotional intelligence and academic procrastination in nursing undergraduates: A cross‐sectional study

“…Resilience and EI could mutually promote each other, and the higher individual's EI is, the better one can control his or her own emotion (Zhang et al., 2019 ). In summary, incorporating EI development into course curricula may increase students' resilience, thereby indirectly influencing AP (Eckert et al., 2016 ; Schuenemann et al., 2022 ).…”

“…In addition, those who always deliberately procrastinate their study missions were more likely to have psychological problems and higher suicidal tendency (Flett et al., 2016 ; Steel, 2007 ). Therefore, lowering AP level is critical to improving educational outcomes such as academic achievement, emotional regulation and psychological resilience (Miraj et al., 2021 ; Mohammadi et al., 2020 ; Schuenemann et al., 2022 ).…”

“…level is critical to improving educational outcomes such as academic achievement, emotional regulation and psychological resilience (Miraj et al, 2021;Mohammadi et al, 2020;Schuenemann et al, 2022).…”

The ABC of academic procrastination: Functional analysis of a detrimental habit

“…As an important mechanism involved in procrastination seems to be related to dysfunctional emotional regulation, especially of negative emotions (e.g., Tice and Baumeister, 1997 ; Tice and Bratslavsky, 2000 ; Sirois and Pychyl, 2013 , 2016 ; Pollack and Herres, 2020 ), interventions that focus on emotion regulation skills are indicated. Indeed, using the Adaptive Coping with Emotions Model (ACE Model; Berking and Whitley, 2014 ), Schuenemann et al (2022) demonstrated that an intervention to train emotion regulation skills can reduce procrastination. Inspecting the ACE Model, effective emotion regulation addresses several aspects related to the antecedent part of the ABC model, such as emotion perception (i.e., to be aware and correctly identify and label emotions), identification of causes and maintaining conditions for emotions, the ability to tolerate negative emotions when necessary (i.e., emotional resilience), being able to a pproach and confront situations that are likely to trigger negative emotions, and being able to provide self-support in distressing situations .…”