## Looking into the role of internal norms of delay ### Authors: - [[Katrin Klingsieck]] - [[Wendelien van Eerde]] #presentation Do our personal norms, social norms, our protestant work ethic profile, our personality, or personal trait procrastination determine if we appraise an instance of delay as procrastination? We would like to present a study in which we tested the widespread idea in procrastination research that internal norms and attributions of delay determine whether a delay is categorized as procrastination (cf. Milgram et al., 1988; [[Wendelien van Eerde|van Eerde]], 2000). We related these internal norms to attitudes shaped by protestant work ethic, to the personality factors conscientiousness and neuroticism, and the individual procrastination tendency. In a first step, we very thoroughly constructed scenarios which depict different episodes of delay in a student's life. These were deduced from theoretical works on different forms of delay (e.g., Hagbin, 2015; [[Katrin Klingsieck|Klingsieck]], 2013). We ran pretest interviews with two students to check their comprehensibility, a pretest with 121 students to check whether the students perceive the scenarios as different forms of delay, and a study with expert ratings by procrastination researchers (N = 38) to check how representative the scenarios are for the forms of delay, namely procrastination, [[strategic delay]], and [[inevitable delay]]. In a second step, we presented altogether six scenarios to 132 university students (51% female; Mage = 23.79; SDage = 3.17) and asked them to a) map the delay to one of the three forms of delay, b) rate how acceptable they and others think it is, c) rate how familiar the described situation is for them and d) identify what kind of feelings such situations usually evoke in them. In addition, they self-rated themselves on the multidimensional work ethic profile (Meriac et al., 2013), the subscales conscientiousness and neuroticism of the Big Five (John & Srivastava, 1999), and the Pure Procrastination Scale (Steel, 2010). The first results of multiple regression analyses show an interesting pattern which we would like to discuss with the procrastination research community. For example, from an intrapersonal perspective, the misidentification of other forms of delay as procrastination seems to depend on the equifinality/heterofinality of the conflicting goals in the scenarios (cf. goal systems theory by Kruglanski et al., 2013). From an interpersonal perspective, the social norms, the facet "wasted time" in the protestant work ethic profile, and neuroticism seem to play a role. ### Keywords: [[internal norms of delay]], [[protestant work ethic]], [[personal norms of acceptability of delay]], [[social norms of acceptability of delay]] ### References: - Haghbin, M. (2015). Conceptualization and operationalization of delay: Development and validation of the multifaceted measure of [[academic procrastination]] and the delay questionnaire (Doctoral dissertation, Carleton University). - John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big-Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (Vol. 2, pp. 102–138). New York: Guilford Press. - [[Katrin Klingsieck|Klingsieck]], K. B. (2013). Procrastination: When good things don't come to those who wait. European Psychologist, 18(1), 24–34. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000138 - Kruglanski, A. W., Köpetz, C., Bélanger, J. J., Chun, W. Y., Orehek, E. & Fishbach, A. (2013). Features of multifinality. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17(1), 22–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868312453087 - Meriac, J. P., Woehr, D. J., Gorman, C. A., & Thomas, A. L. (2013). Development and validation of a short form for the multidimensional work ethic profile. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 82(3), 155-164. - Milgram, N. A., Sroloff, B., & Rosenbaum, M. (1988). The procrastination of everyday life. Journal of Research in Personality, 22, 197-212. - Steel, P. (2010). Arousal, avoidant and decisional procrastinators: do they exist? Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 926–934. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.025 - [[Wendelien van Eerde|van Eerde]], W. (2000). Procrastination: [[Self-regulation]] in initiating aversive goals. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 49, 372-389. #aversiveness