Procrastination in Students: The Role of Laziness and Other Underlying Factors

Name Institutional Affiliations Date Abstract Procrastination is a global concern as it proves self-harming to its victims, especially the students, as it negatively affects their academic performance. Procrastination is an involuntary delay in doing something. To this effect, this experimental study investigates the underlying factors that foster procrastination among American students. Is laziness among students a major force that enhances delays in attending academic work? The current study hypothesizes that laziness plays a major role in defining the students’ attitude towards academic dedication. Based on a literature review from different scholars considered within this essay, most students procrastinates their academic tasks to attend activities that suit their interests, assuming they still have time for their academics. The study consists of a sample of 202 undergraduate students from a major Public American University males (n= 103) and females (n=99) were randomly sampled. This experimental study used a procrastination scale and standardized scales of perceived stress, depression, anxiety, fatigue and life satisfaction to evaluate variables of interest in the study (Procrastination and laziness) among the selected sample. Results of the study indicated that most students procrastinate due to a negative attitude toward a given academic task attributed to laziness in committing to the challenge. 90% of the sample, 55% males and 35% female, confirmed that the complexities of some courses foster a negative attitude towards the course leading many students to embrace procrastination. However, this study recommends considering the extent of the effect that fear of failure and lack of self-regulation enhance laziness and foster procrastination in students leading to poor academic performances. Causes of Procrastination among Students Research Question: Is procrastination among students all about laziness, or do other underlying factors enhance procrastination? Introduction Procrastination is an involuntary delay in doing something. Unfortunately, procrastination is a global concern as it proves self-harming to its victims, most especially the students, as it negatively affects their academic performances. The self-awareness within an individual defines the negative impact of procrastinating among victims. It is imperative to note that procrastination does not happen by mistake; rather, the victim remains conscious of the act. For this reason, one can describe procrastination as essentially irrational since victims engage in it knowing that its outcomes will be negative effects in the long run. Unfortunately, procrastination remains characterized by an individual's inability to cope with challenging emotions or negative moods like anxiety, insecurity, self-doubt, boredom and frustrations. To this effect, arguing from a psychological point of view, procrastination proves to be an emotion regulation problem instead of assuming it is a time management