Predicting Delay in Goal-Directed Action: An Experience Sampling Approach Uncovering Within-Person Determinants Involved in the Onset of Academic Procrastination Behavior

Academic procrastination involves the delayed implementation of actions required to fulfill study-related tasks. These behavioral delays are thought to result from momentary failures in self-regulation (i.e., within-person processes). Most previous studies focused on the role of trait-based individual differences in students’ procrastination tendencies. Little is known about the within-person processes involved in the occurrence of procrastination behavior in real-life academic situations. The present study applied an event-based experience sampling approach to investigate whether the onset of task-specific delay behavior can be attributed to unfavorable changes in students’ momentary appraisals of tasks (value, aversiveness, effort, expectations of success), which may indicate failures in self-regulation arise between critical phases of goal-directed action. University students (N = 75) used an electronic diary over eight days to indicate their next days’ intentions to work on academic tasks and their task-specific appraisals (n = 582 academic tasks planned). For each task, a second query requested the next day determined whether students’ task-related appraisals changed and whether they implemented their intention on time or delayed working on the respective task (n = 501 completed task-specific measurements). Students’ general procrastination tendency was assessed at baseline using two established self-report questionnaires. Stepwise two-level logistic regression analyses revealed that within-person changes in task-related appraisals that reflected a devaluation of the study-related tasks increased the risk for an actual delay. The risk to delay decreased when students maintained a positive attitude toward the task. Students’ general procrastination tendency did not predict individual differences in their task-specific delay behavior. We discuss these findings in light of the growing effort to understand the within-person processes that contribute to induce procrastination behavior under real-life academic conditions and illustrate how this knowledge can benefit the design of tasks and instructions that support students’ self-regulation to their best.