## I Do as You Do: Parental Influences on Emerging Adults' Procrastination ### Authors - [[Ranjana Dutta]] - [[Lila Duvendack]] - [[Julia Lange]] #poster During adolescence, parents focus on preparing children for adult years. Our poster examines parental influences on delay and procrastination among college-going adults in the U.S. and China. This research expands on prior studies of parental influence on procrastination by examining multiple domains (Dutta & Truax, 2020; Hen & Goroshit, 2018; [[Katrin Klingsieck|Klingsieck]], 2013a) across two culturally diverse countries. College students in two regional universities in the midwestern U.S. (_n_ = 814) and the Guangzhou region of China (_n_ = 577) responded to a bilingual online survey administered from the U.S. using SurveyGizmo (Alchemer) in the Fall of 2019. The survey included the Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS; Steel, 2010, 2015, not presented due to space limitations), delay in tasks across multiple life domains _over the past six months_, and retrospective reports of young adults on _parental influence during their teen years_. Parental influence was assessed in five ways – using culturally sensitive measures of parental psychological control (asserting authority, inducing guilt, and withdrawing love (Wang et al., 2007)) and promotion of autonomous decision-making (Manzi et al., 2012). In addition, respondents reported parental emphasis on timeliness/not delaying tasks across relevant domains, prudence or long-term orientation (Sharma, 2011) and observed parental delays across domains.  We present comprehensive analyses of the respondents’ delay patterns across domains, how parental delay and emphasis for timeliness track on corresponding domains, and correlations between them in both countries. As expected, we found parental psychological control was positively related to delays across domains. Conversely, parental promotion of autonomous decision-making, prudence/long-term orientation, and parents’ emphasis on timeliness were negatively correlated with delay. The dimensions of parenting showed a stronger relationship to procrastination in China than in the United States. Participants’ delay was stronger in domains where parents observably delayed. Parental delay behaviors were consistently, and in the U.S. significantly, more related to procrastination than parental emphasis on timeliness.  We conducted hierarchical multiple regression analysis. We 1) controlled for gender and parental education effects; 2) added general parental autonomy support and psychological control; 3) included parents encouraging long-term orientation and valuing timeliness, and 4) included observed parental delay. Our results indicate a greater impact of observed parental delay than the parenting dimensions and temporal orientation, suggesting that young adults in both countries do what they saw parents do, more than what parents say. ### Keywords: [[procrastination as a keyword (needs further specification to be useful)]], [[Life-domain delay]], [[Parenting]], [[Psychological Control]], [[Autonomy Support]], [[Long-Term Orientation]], [[Parental Delay]], [[Emphasis on Timeliness]] ### References - Belleza-Torrejón, S.E., Aguilar, C.C.M, De la Cruz, N.M.P., Vásquez, E.M.G., & Quispe-López, J.M., (2024). The Development of Artificial Intelligence as An Influential Factor in Procrastination. International Journal of Religion. 5. 5461-5467. [https://doi.org/10.61707/zjthpd48](https://doi.org/10.61707/zjthpd48) - Chen, G. & Lyu, C. (2024) The relationship between smartphone addiction and procrastination among students: A systematic review and meta-analysis. 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