Abstract
University students (n = 75; M age = 21.4 years old) and community adults (n = 55: M age = 36.6 years old) completed self-reported measures of decisional procrastination (indecision), character (life satisfaction, meaningful life, and need for cognition), context (place attachment, sense of community, and psychological home) and “cross-over” factors relating character and context (self-identity with possessions, people/thing orientation, and clutter), to provide an ecological understanding of persons who claim indecision. Controlling for social desirability tendencies, indecision was negatively related to all character but none of the context variables. Indecision also was related to both person and thing orientation and clutter. Multiple regression analysis indicated that only need for cognition significantly predicted (negatively) indecision among character, context, and cross-over variable sets. Subjective well-being also predicted indecision with low need for cognition among cross-over variables. Taken together, decisional procrastinators reported too much clutter (stuff), interfering with a positive quality of life and related to character over context and cross-over, ecological variables.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Beswick, G., Rothblum, E. D., & Mann, L. (1988). Psychological antecedents of student procrastination. Australian Psychologist, 23(2), 207–217.
Blunt, A., & Pychyl, T. A. (1998). Volitional action and inaction in the lives of undergraduate students: state orientation, boredom and procrastination. Personality and Individual Differences, 24(6), 837–846.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Burnett, P. C., Mann, L., & Beswick, G. (1989). Validation of the flinders decision making questionnaire on course decision making by students. Australian Psychologist, 24, 285–292.
Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., & Kao, C. F. (1984). The efficient assessment of need for cognition. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48, 306–307.
Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24, 349–354.
Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75.
Effert, B., & Ferrari, J. R. (1989). Decisional procrastination: examining personality correlates. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 4, 151–156.
Ferrari, J. R. (1994). Dysfunctional procrastination and its relationship with self-esteem, interpersonal dependency, and self-defeating behaviors. Personality and Individual Differences, 15, 673–679.
Ferrari, J. R. (2010). Still procrastinating? The no regrets guide to getting it done. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ferrari, J. R., & Dovidio, J. (2000). Examining behavioral processes in indecision: decisional procrastination and decision-making style. Journal of Research in Personality, 34, 127–137.
Ferrari, J. R., & Dovidio, J. (2001). Behavioral decision making strategies by indecisives. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 1113–1123.
Ferrari, J. R., & Pychyl, T. A. (2007). Regulating speed, accuracy, and judgments by indecisives: effects of frequent choices on self-regulation failure. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 777–787.
Ferrari, J. R., Johnson, J., & McCown, W. (1995). Procrastination and task avoidance: theory, research, and treatment. New York: Plenum/Springer Science Publications.
Ferrari, J.R., Roster, C.A., Crum, K.P., & Pardo, M. (2017). Procrastinators and clutter: an ecological view of living with excessive stuff. Current Psychology, in press.
Ferraro, R., Escalas, J. E., & Bettman, J. R. (2011). Our possessions, our selves: domains of self-worth and the possession-self link. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21, 169–177.
Frost, R., & Shows, D. L. (1993). The nature and measurement of compulsive indecisiveness. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 31(7), 683–692.
Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. H., & Woodcock, A. (2011). Exploring and measuring differences in person-thing orientation. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 28–33.
Harriott, J. S., Ferrari, J. R., & Dovidio, J. F. (1996). Distractibility, daydreaming, and self-critical cognitions as determinants of indecision. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 11, 337–344.
Janis, I. L., & Mann, L. (1977). Decision making: a psychological analysis of conflict, choice and commitment. New York: Free Press.
Mann, L. (1982). Decision-making scale. In J.R. Ferrari, J. Johnson, & W. McCown (1995). Procrastination and task avoidance: Theory, research, and treatment. New York: Plenum Press.
Meyers, J.H., & Glazer, S. (2012). Meaningfulness in life: measurement development. Poster presentation at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Diego, CA.
Orellana-Damacela, L. E., Tindale, R. S., & Suarez-Balcazar, Y. (2000). The impact of self-discrepancies on people's tendency to procrastinate. Journal of Personality and Social Behavior, 15, 225–238.
Peterson, N. A., Speer, P. W., & McMillian, D. W. (2007). Validation of a brief sense of community scale: confirmation of the principal theory of sense of community. Journal of Community Psychology, 36, 61–73.
Reynolds, W. M. (1982). Development of reliable and valid short forms of the Marlowe-Crowne social desirability scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 38, 119–125.
Roster, C. A., Ferrari, J. R., & Jurkat, P. (2016). The dark side of home: assessing possession ‘clutter’ on subjective well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 46, 32–41.
Scher, S., & Ferrari, J. R. (2000). The recall of completed and non-completed tasks through daily logs to measure procrastination. Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, 15, 255–265.
Signmon, S. T., Whitcomb, S. R., & Snyder, C. R. (2002). Psychological home. In A. T. Fisher, C. S. Sonn, & B. J. Bishop (eds). Psychological sense of community: research, applications, and implications (pp. 25–41). New York: Springer Publications.
Specter, M., & Ferrari, J. R. (2000). Toward an understanding of academic and nonacademic tasks procrastinated by students: the use of daily logs. Psychology in the Schools, 34, 359–366.
Tibbett, T., & Ferrari, J. R. (2018). The U.S. as a ‘ProcrastiNATION’: Assessing indecision on life satisfaction and life regret. North American Journal of Psychology, 20, in press.
Williams, D.R., & Roggerbuck, J.W. (1989). Measuring place attachment: Some preliminary results. Paper presented at the session on outdoor planning and management, NRPA Symposium on Leisure Research, San Antonio, TX.
Acknowledgements
Authors are grateful to Trina and Angela Dao for presenting this work at the 2017 biennial Procrastination Conference in Chicago, IL.
Funding
This study was not funded by any grant.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethical Approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict of Interest
JR Ferrari declares that he has no conflict of interest. C Roster and M Pardo declare each that they have no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ferrari, J.R., Crum, K.P. & Pardo, M.A. Decisional Procrastination: Assessing Characterological and Contextual Variables around Indecision. Curr Psychol 37, 436–440 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9681-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9681-x
Keywords
- Procrastination
- Clutter
- Possessions
- Ecological context
- Social relations