Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, UK.
Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.
Br J Health Psychol. 2023 Sep;28(3):860-875. doi: 10.1111/bjhp.12658. Epub 2023 Mar 15.
Procrastination is a common form of self-regulation failure that a growing evidence base suggests can confer risk for poor health outcomes, especially when it becomes habitual. However, the proposed linkages of chronic procrastination to health outcomes have not been tested over time or accounted for the contributions of higher-order personality factors linked to both chronic procrastination and health-related outcomes. We addressed these issues by examining the role of chronic procrastination in health outcomes over time in which the hypothesized links of procrastination to health problems operate via stress and health behaviours.
Three-wave longitudinal study with 1-month intervals.
Participants (N = 379) completed measures of trait procrastination at Time 1, and measures of health behaviours, stress and health problems at each time point, in a lab setting.
Procrastination and the health variables were inter-related in the expected directions across the three assessments. Chronic procrastination was positively associated with stress and negatively with health behaviours at each time point. Path analysis testing a cross-lagged longitudinal mediation model found an indirect relationship operating between procrastination and health problems via stress, after accounting for the contributions of conscientiousness and neuroticism.
This research extends previous work by demonstrating that the links between chronic procrastination and poor health are accounted for mainly by higher stress, after accounting for other key traits, and that these associations are robust over time. The findings are discussed in terms of the importance of addressing habitual self-regulation failure for improving health.
拖延是一种常见的自我调节失败形式，越来越多的证据表明，它可能会导致健康状况不佳的风险，尤其是当它成为习惯时。然而，慢性拖延与健康结果之间的拟议联系尚未经过时间检验，也没有考虑到与慢性拖延和与健康相关的结果都有关的高阶人格因素的贡献。我们通过检查慢性拖延在一段时间内对健康结果的影响来解决这些问题，其中拖延与健康问题的假设联系是通过压力和健康行为来运作的。
三波纵向研究，间隔 1 个月。
参与者（N=379）在实验室环境中，在第一次测量时完成了特质拖延的测量，在每个时间点都完成了健康行为、压力和健康问题的测量。
拖延和健康变量在三个评估中以预期的方向相互关联。慢性拖延在每个时间点都与压力呈正相关，与健康行为呈负相关。路径分析测试了一个交叉滞后纵向中介模型，发现拖延和健康问题之间存在间接关系，这是通过压力来运作的，考虑到了责任心和神经质的贡献。
这项研究通过证明慢性拖延与健康状况不佳之间的联系主要是由更高的压力引起的，在考虑了其他关键特征之后，这些关联是稳健的，从而扩展了之前的工作。研究结果从解决习惯性自我调节失败以改善健康的重要性方面进行了讨论。
