Full Title: Effect of Procrastination as a failure of one’s self-regulation likely to result in self-critical emotions like shame and guilt. Short Title: Procrastination, Shame and Guilt Shagun JainMSc Organizational Psychology, University of [email protected] AbstractThe purpose of this study is to know the effect of procrastination at workplace and how it affects an individual’s emotion in a positive or a negative way. Procrastination has been found in previous literature as a very common and recent studies show that the majority of today’s population engage themselves in procrastination which may lead to negative emotions like shame and guilt or positive like motivation. Despite of feelings like shame and guilt always end up resulting from procrastination and this is what brought my interest to investigate this area Participants of the research will be acknowledged by 4 situations each stating same background but different condition and effect.
The study in the end will decide if there is an effect of procrastination as a failure or success of one’s self regulation likely to result in either positive or negative emotions like shame, guilt, and motivation. Key words: Procrastination, Shame, Guilt, Motivation and Work under pressure. Effect of Procrastination as a failure of one’s self-regulation likely to result in self-critical emotions like shame and guilt.In literature, the term Procrastination can be defined as the act of delaying or expanding an activity or task till a person reaches a point where there is no enough time to complete the given task or activity (Ferrari, Doroszko, & Joseph, 2005). It can be a pervasive failure of self-regulatory affecting most of the people in today’s world.
On a precise note procrastination can be defined as a delay of an intended course of action by an individual despite of knowing the negative impact on the effectiveness of the task performance resulting to a poorer mental health. (Tice, D. M. & Baumeister, R. F.,1997). In addition procrastination is related to many emotions or behaviors seeking an individual’s perspective and the common ones are shame and guilt for the ones who procrastinate recurrently.
It is a most common form of self sabotage where an individual is in the quicksand of procrastination (Burka & Yuen, 1983). Apart from dealing with these negative seeking behaviors procrastination can also be advantageous or appropriate in few conditions like when the feel motivated or when they realize that they can work better under pressure. Procrastination at workplaceWhen there is a talk about procrastination at workplace it can be understood that the increased responsibilities and the load of work together with a lot of pressure to get oneself upto the mark has definitely affected one’s life in the workplace when considered in few recent years.
The load of work has led to an expression such as different negative emotions, feeling like to do a lot in a very short span of time. In others words procrastination can be expressed as an activity in everyday’s vicious cycle that increases the pressure to work on time (Ferrai, J. & Tice, D. M., 2000). The measures of ubiquity of procrastination is no new to any organization in today’s era and it can be understood by seeing that approximately 55% – 70% of the adult population working in a workplace take a pert in procrastinating to the extent that it might lead to some sort of negative feeling or difficulty if they do or do not succeed in that particular task. According to earlier studies the prevalence of procrastination among the adults doing a certain task tend to increase within years as in earlier days it stated about a percentage of 15% – 20% (Harriott & Ferrari, 1996).
There has been a very great popularity of procrastination as a trend leading to a high increase with a possible revealing of procrastination in today’s society in general.Procrastination Affecting Emotions like Shame and GuiltOnce there has been an understanding about how procrastination exists at workplace it can be typified as an ignorance behavior where different individuals working at workplace avoids the execution of a particular task. As soon as an individual gets into something causing procrastination it represents some kind of intrapersonal conflict which leads to emotions like shame and guilt (Diaz-Morales, J. F., Ferrari, J., Argumedo, D., & Diaz, K., 2006).
Where Guilt is arguably more reciprocal and if there were no negative consequences then you did not actually let anyone down and shame is argued to be more about personal shortcomings that might evoke a feeling even in light of no consequences. In other words, the preference for opting procrastination at first place can dominant some positive outcomes like motivation but after the task has been completed it can serve the purpose of feeling better for a short period of time and lead to feelings that are self defeating like shame or guilt (Ainslie, 1975; Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988). There can be different scenarios when one procrastinates their work the first scenario is when a person gets caught and fails in the task or succeed in the task while not getting caught understanding that they would put exactly the same amount of effort on that work considering it not to matter whether done on time or not or whether got caught or not until and unless the work is done irrespective of the result (Ferran, 1992, Ferran et al, 1995, Uy, 1995).Research QuestionProcrastination is a failure of one’s self-regulation and is likely to result in self-critical emotions.
However, what happens when one procrastinates and gets away with it? Will the negative emotions disappear and if not, which will remain? As in every situation there can be feeling of guilt which can be arguably more reciprocal or shame which also can be argued to be more about personal shortcomings. There can also be a condition where people may write it off as working better under pressure.HypothesisPeople who are caught procrastinating and the result was a failure the participant is more likely to feel self-critical emotions like shame and guilt. MethodParticipants Participants for this research are people at workplace in Kent. The research is about a qualitative experimental check on the effect of procrastination with the effect on the various emotions and exactly what happens after the process of procrastination. (Wolters, C. A. ,2003).
Where there will be like 80-100 participants to do this research.DesignFor this research the scale of measurement is to be analyzed with a 2×2 GLM for guilt and shame and the mode of statistics used for the research is regression to predict the levels of action tendency from the level of different emotions like shame motivation or guilt.The Independent variable for the research is procrastination and the Dependent Variables are Shame felt, guilt felt, motivation on future tasks, ability to work under pressure. Procedure This can be done by creating a own forced choice questionnaire with 4 scenarios on it stating exactly the same pattern but with a difference in conditions and the participants would be asked to react on each condition about how they felt if they were in the in that situation. The situations can be better explained as by the following example.Situation 1: The participants are at a given position and are asked to complete a task by their supervisor before a given date so as to reach a given target but they do get caught while procrastinating the work and the result leads to failure of the task.Situation 2: The participants are at a given position and are asked to complete a task by their supervisor before a given date so as to reach a given target but they do get caught while procrastinating the work and the result leads to success of the task.
Situation 3: The participants are at a given position are asked to complete a task by their supervisor before a given date so as to reach a given target but they do not get caught while procrastinating the work and the result leads to failure of the task.Situation 4: The participants are at position and are asked to complete a task by their supervisor before a given date so as to reach a given target but they do not get caught while procrastinating the work and the result leads to success of the task.SamplingIn this research there will be like 80-100 participants from different background working at different places working in United Kingdom particularly in the areas of Kent. Mainly the participants will be from a group of the age between 21-27 years.
The sampling can be done through a research participation scheme. The type of sampling used will be the simple random sampling and the participants will be given equal opportunity with same time and true information to participate in this research. MaterialsTo conduct this research there will be use of various resources and equipments including the people (participants) at workplace in Kent. There will be a structured questionnaire that will be in terms of technological or computing equipment where the research is going to be conducted through a application named Qualtrics, an application where people can come through and complete the research questionnaire.EthicsIt is important to have ethics in a research. The research will remain properly confidential as the names of the participants can be remained anonymous and the research will also be protected by any hacks or misinterpretations as the motive of the research would be very clear. The participants will be asked to sign a form of consent before starting the research and can leave the research at any point of time if not feel comfortable answering the questionnaire. DiscussionProcrastination can be a lack of practicing on a task in different context and may have different aspects of it.
(Steel, Brothen, & Wambach,. 2001). The research will probably result in scenario where people might end up considering one of the situations mentioned in the questionnaire and the result will be either they get caught and fail which means that there is a high possibility of negative emotions or there is some motivation to succeed in the future by working without procrastinating next time. It can also be if they get caught while procrastinating but succeed in the task there will be a lighter effect on the emotions like shame and guilt on the participant or they can also be less motivated for the future. If the participants do not get caught but fail the task anyway they might feel shame but less of guilt that is not exposed but also less motivated for future. If the participants are in the situation where they don’t get caught but also succeed in the task they will feel very low shame as well as guilt and will not at all be motivated for the future tasks. It can be further understood by the table 1 (in appendix a).
The research discusses all about what happens when one procrastinates and gets away with it. It is discussed about the feeling of guilt which is arguably more reciprocal and if there were no negative consequences then you did not actually let anyone down. Also, shame is argued to be more about personal shortcomings.Maybe, but people may write it off as working better under pressure. (Ferrari, J., 2001) Limitations of StudyThere are always limitations to any research. The limitations can be less resources less time not a very large practical are that is a small sample size as the research does not have access to a large sample and also coz of less of time the research cannot focus on long term prospectus of an individual.ConclusionTo be conclude the research proposal in an idea of a research on effect of procrastination on different emotions with respect to different situations and effects ( Rosenberg, M.
, 1965). It can be seen that what percentage of participants feel about how they feel negatively or positively when they procrastinate their given tasks and what leads to the effect on an individual after the work has been procrastinated. ReferencesAlexander, E.S., Onwuegbuzie, A.J. (2007).
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