Psychological determinants of academic procrastination of higher education students

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Psychological determinants of academic procrastination of higher education students

Overchuk Victoriia Anatoliivna Doctor of Economics, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Professor, Head of Psychology Department, Vasyl⁵ Stus Donetsk National University, Vinnytsia

Taran Amina Andriivna 4th year student of the OP "Psychology" Department of Psychology, Vasyl⁵ Stus Donetsk National University, Vinnytsia

Abstract

The article is devoted to the psychological determinants of academic procrastination of higher education students, since modern studying in higher education institutions is a stressful period of life, especially in conditions of socio-psychological instability, as it involves intensive daily study loads in the conditions of long-term stress of war. According to the analysis of scientific literature, the indicators of procrastination in students are high and are accompanied not only by a decrease in academic performance but also hurt the psychological wellbeing of students, determining the decline in their psycho-emotional state. As a result, the study of the phenomenon of procrastination and its causes is becoming increasingly relevant. According to the authors of the article, procrastination turns into a serious problem for higher education students, as they lose opportunities, are stressed, and experience internal disorders. The conditions in which the modern student lives are extreme and stimulate the development of stress. The mechanisms of behaviour formed based on the main provisions of procrastination are considered. Based on the analysis of scientific sources, the main causes of academic procrastination are considered. According to the authors, timely psycho-prophylaxis and psycho-correction of students' procrastination will prevent a decrease in their academic performance, and development of personal and professional qualities, and will contribute to the competitiveness of future specialists in the modem labour market. Further promising ways to study the academic procrastination of higher education students are highlighted.

Keywords: academic procrastination, students of higher education, behavioural mechanisms, stress, psychological well-being.

Оверчук Вікторія Анатоліївна доктор економічних наук, кандидат психологічних наук, професор, завідувач кафедри психології, Донецький національний університет імені Василя Стуса, м. Вінниця

Таран Аміна Андріївна студентка 4 курсу ОП "Психологія" кафедри психології, Донецький національний університет імені Василя Стуса, м. Вінниця

ПСИХОЛОГІЧНІ ДЕТЕРМІНАНТИ АКАДЕМІЧНОЇ ПРОКРАСТИНАЦІЇ СТУДЕНТІВ ВИЩОЇ ОСВІТИ

Анотація. Стаття присвячена психологічним детермінантам академічної прокрастинації здобувачів вищої освіти, адже сучасне навчання в закладах вищої освіти є стресогенним життєвим періодом, особливо в умовах соціально-психологічної нестабільності, оскільки передбачає інтенсивні повсякденні навчальні навантаження в умовах довготривалого стресу війни. Як засвідчив проведений аналіз наукової літератури, показники прояву прокрастинації у студентської молоді є високим й супроводжуються не лише зниженням академічної успішності, а й загалом негативно впливають на психологічне благополуччя студента, детермінують зниження його психоемоційного стану. У наслідок цього дослідження феномену прокрастинації і причин його виникнення стає все більш актуальним. На думку авторів статті, прокрастинація обертається серйозними проблемами для здобувачів вищої освіти, оскільки вони втрачають можливості, перебувають під стресом, переживають внутрішній розлад. Умови, в яких протікає життєдіяльність сучасного студента є екстремальними і стимулюючими розвиток стресу. Розглянуті механізм поведінки, що формуються на основі основних положеньпрокрастинації. На підставі аналіз наукових джерел розглятнуті основні причини академічної прокрастинації. На думку авторів, своєчасна психопрофілактика і психокорекція прокрастинації студентів дозволить запобігти зниженню рівня їх навчальної успішності, розвитку особистісних і професійних якостей, сприятиме конкурентностпроможності майбутнього фахівця на своїй сучасному ринку праці. Виділені подальші перспективні шляхи дослідження академічної прокрастинації здобувачів вищої освіти.

Ключові слова: академічна прокрастинація, здобувачі вищої освіти, механізми поведінки, стрес, психологічне благополуччя.

Statement of the problem. For more than a year, Ukraine has been experiencing an unprovoked attack by the russian federation. In real-time, people are dying under fire, buildings are being destroyed, families are being torn apart, and people are going through occupation, violence and torture. More than 10 million Ukrainians were forced to change their place of residence and leave their jobs and studies under pressure. According to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, as of the beginning of February 2023, more than 3127 educational facilities were damaged by bombing and shelling, including 517 buildings of higher education institutions, of which more than 150 were displaced. Most universities have taken steps to move from physical to online learning to ensure continuity of learning, to enable students to attend classes wherever they are, to study at their own pace, and to return to the lecture recordings at any time. However, despite all the conveniences and opportunities of distance learning, it is necessary to keep in mind its certain challenges and peculiarities, first of all, the need for a high level of organisation and self-motivation of students, which is lacking in the conditions of long-term stress of war. It is during prolonged (chronic) stress that the human brain chooses an energysaving mode, so the cognitive syndrome of "putting it off until tomorrow" that is procrastination, formed in the mental space, and academic procrastination is a widespread problematic behaviour among higher education students in the current conditions caused by post-quarantine restrictions and martial law.

Analysis of the latest research and publications. The study of procrastination as a psychological phenomenon began in the mid-1980s. It was then that the topic of procrastination attracted the attention of many scientists and became quite popular. Over the past 30 years, the concept of procrastination has included various approaches to interpreting the content of this phenomenon, and numerous empirical studies have been conducted to determine the specifics of the relationship between procrastination and perfectionism, motivation, anxiety, coping strategies, somatic and mental problems, economic instability, professional activity, interpersonal relationships, etc.

The study of various aspects of procrastination has been the subject of numerous works by such domestic and foreign scholars as D. Barns, R. Biri, N. Haraniana, S. Yeniklopov, M. Larskikh, L. Saksa, D. Sedler, J. Haura, R. Hupta, T. Jackson, L. Dementii, J. Diaz-Morales, L. Pope, O. Sennyk, D. Hershey, C. Wolters, C. Danna, J. Donovan, W. MacCoun, E. Rozblium, S. Silverman,

L. Solomon, L. Solynina, A. Shylina, M. Dvornyk, V. Kovylina, K. Markievich, N. Rudnova, P. Stil and others. However, the peculiarities of academic procrastination during distance learning in modern conditions of psychological instability have not been studied enough and require additional research, because the stressful life period of students, which involves intensive daily study loads, is complicated by the peculiarities of distance education, the requirements for independent processing of a large amount of new material, technical difficulties, etc. psychological procrastination education

Purpose of the article. The purpose of the article is to investigate the causes and consequences of the phenomenon of procrastination and to identify ways to prevent it.

Presentation of the main material. The modern world is characterised by rapid communication and technological development, globalisation, military conflicts, and new challenges for individuals. As a result, the study of the procrastination phenomenon and its causes is becoming increasingly relevant. Postponement, procrastination, delay - these concepts are familiar to everyone, because at different stages of development, in different areas of life, we sometimes resort to these actions when we are unwilling to fulfil certain assignments and tasks for one reason or another, replacing them with secondary and less useful tasks. Since there is still no unified understanding of the personality's structure and the structure of the psyche, the study of procrastination is also not sufficiently studied. For example, the phenomenon of procrastination, its causes and consequences are considered by researchers from the point of view of different psychological paradigms and with application to other phenomena, such as coping strategies, stress, time modus, unconscious, perfectionism, and others [1].

The paradox of procrastination is that its obvious purpose - to make life easier turns into a serious problem for higher education students, as they lose opportunities, are stressed, and experience internal disorders. The conditions in which a modern student lives are extreme and stimulate the development of stress. This is due to many factors and threats, including military, political, informational, socioeconomic, environmental, and natural. Stress is the basis for describing 90% of the causes of the most common diseases in modern society. Procrastination is a form of behaviour that is formed as a defence response to combat anxiety that occurs at the beginning of a task in an attempt to complete the work started or a mechanism for coping with anxiety that accompanies the beginning or completion of a task or decision-making. Procrastination is not based on the laziness of young people but on complex, deeply personal experiences associated with stressful situations (real or internal) and anxiety that accompany them constantly, which can lead to neurotic disorder, depression and psychosomatic diseases, the nature of which is revealed by A. Maneghetti [2].

Thus, procrastination can be seen as a special way of coping with a stressful situation. Most often, especially during the student period, such a situation can be the situation of evaluating the subject's activities or results, especially under the long-term stress of war. In addition to external evaluation, a young person tends to evaluate himself or herself, and in the case of high expectations and demands from himself or herself, provided that he or she has extremely high standards, he or she will expect a perfect result when performing any task.

G. Ainslie proposed a similar interpretation of the phenomenon under study. The scientist views procrastination as a "basic impulse", emphasising that among a wide range of tasks, people tend to choose those that involve a quick positive result. In this regard, a procrastinator is a person with a fixed habit of performing shortterm tasks, the implementation of which allows you to feel immediately satisfied with the work done. At the same time, such a habit becomes an obstacle to achieving important long-term life goals that involve more significant but time-delayed rewards [3].

M. Silver and J. Sabini argue that the postponement of cases that has a rational basis should not be interpreted as procrastination. According to scholars, this construct is inherently irrational and involves the inclusion of a person in an activity that is insignificant to him or her, with full awareness of the urgent need to perform urgently a more important task [4].

The mechanism of behaviour formed based on such provisions includes:

a) a decision to postpone the case;

b) a promise to complete it later;

c) replacing the postponed task with another activity;

d) finding excuses for inaction to get rid of the guilt feeling.

N. Milgram proposed the first classification of procrastination types in coauthorship with J. Bathory and D. Maurer, who identified five main types of procrastination [5]:

1. Every day or daily procrastination, which is associated with postponing everyday tasks and routine duties.

2. Procrastination in making decisions, even minor ones.

3. Neurotic procrastination is associated with postponing vital decisions.

4. Compulsive procrastination, which includes every day, behavioural and decision-making procrastination. All of these types of procrastination manifest themselves simultaneously in one subject.

5. Academic procrastination, which manifests itself in postponing academic tasks.

Later, Milgram and Tenne, who combined different types of procrastination into two main ones, improved this classification: procrastination in performing tasks and procrastination in decision-making [6].

However, modern science has not yet developed a universal theory of procrastination, and modern psychology is inclined to believe that procrastination is an expression of an emotional reaction to planned or necessary tasks. Depending on the nature of these emotions, procrastination is divided into two fundamental types:

• "relaxed" (temporary), when a person spends time on other, more enjoyable activities and entertainment. Procrastination of such people is a form of escape from unpleasant experiences associated with doing what they put off. At first, they do not do it because they are bored, and then they look for excuses or come up with pseudo- rational explanations for their behaviour;

• "tense" (chronic), associated with general overload, loss of sense of time, dissatisfaction with one's achievements, unclear life goals, indecision and self-doubt.

Procrastination does not become an obstacle if it is temporary, and, on the contrary, it becomes a problem if it becomes chronic. Such procrastination hinders work, success, and plans. It can be the hidden onset of a psychological or physical illness. A classic example of chronic academic procrastination is the habit of many students preparing for an exam on the last day or even the night before. Chronic procrastination is inherent in students who have chosen the wrong profession and educational institution; they study without interest, hence the sleepless nights and attempts to do unpleasant tasks on the last day before tests and exams.

The analysis of scientific sources has shown that researchers consider the main causes of academic procrastination to be:

• lack of motivation to study, in cases where students enrolled in HEIs only at the request of their parents and see no prospects for future professional activities, the main purpose of studying is to obtain a diploma, etc;

• violation of the volitional sphere. Procrastinators are individuals with underdeveloped, unformed volitional processes who are unable or incapable of overcoming themselves, overcoming difficulties, etc. They do not know how to organise themselves and their time, demonstrate an increased level of personal anxiety, low self-esteem, weakness of character, fatigue;

• lack of readiness to perform a task, stress as a result of lack of confidence in one's abilities, inability to build a hierarchy of goals and values and plan one's activities. The negative impact was caused by the consequences of the pandemic, which led to a lack of direct communication with others and an excess of virtual communication, social restriction, lack of guidance and advice from teachers;

• resistance to external control or personal resistance, disobedience to the external environment. Procrastinators are convinced that their wishes are the law, and any demands on them from relatives, teachers, managers, friends, etc. cause protest and rebellion, respectively. Students are annoyed by the roles, programmes and plans imposed on them, and they put off acting on their own decisions, defending their point of view, and trying to prove their independence from public opinion, but losing time to generate their ideas;

• incorrect beliefs or a desire to increase the level of stress. The student thinks that if he puts himself in a box, he can do a much better job. Under conditions of time pressure, a person can experience mobilisation of forces, full concentration, and increased efficiency of all mental processes. After completion of the work, there is a subjectively pleasant release of tension.

• fear of future failure or fear of future success. For example, several scientists have found that more than 50 per cent of respondents have thoughts that indicate a fear of failure, but K. Ley notes that a study of the work of clinical psychologists shows that procrastinators also tend to have a fear of success. This phenomenon is often formed during school years and manifests itself in the desire to be inferior and less successful to maintain certain connections with friends and conform to certain stereotypes. This phenomenon is often formed during school years and manifests itself in the desire to be inferior and less successful to maintain certain connections with friends and conform to certain stereotypes. In this case, the individual is convinced that demonstrating more effective performance than other members of his or her reference group poses a threat of being rejected by the social environment.

This encourages the individual to postpone tasks to maintain a sense of belonging to a particular group. In addition, a person may avoid completing one task in order not to create the basis for failure in the future. Perfectionism (from the Latin -absolute perfection) is a person's desire for perfection, high personal standards, a person's desire to bring the results of any activity to the highest standards (moral, aesthetic, intellectual); it is the need for perfection of the products of one's work [7]. In addition, in psychological science, perfectionism is seen as a set of specific personal characteristics that involve setting excessively high standards and the inability to feel satisfied with the results of one's work. The personality does not accept average results, and if you take on a job, you must do it flawlessly. According to scientists, a person procrastinates to gain additional time to complete a task perfectly. However, with excessively high requirements for their activities, the likelihood of the result meeting such standards is low. The procrastinator develops an irrational belief that he or she must do the job very well. Based on this belief, the procrastinator forms principles for evaluating his activity, which often leads to the postponement of important activities for fear of making a mistake. Thus, by procrastinating, the procrastinator gains the advantage of being able to explain failure by limited time resources, rather than by his or her incompetence or lack of necessary abilities.

J. Burka and L. Yuen identified several perfectionist beliefs that are often manifested in individuals prone to procrastination [8]. They include:

1. "All or nothing": because of one's activity, a person allows only two options -full compliance with the established requirements or complete failure.

2. "I can't lose": the individual avoids activities that involve direct competition with others.

3. "There is only one right decision": a perfectionist tends to postpone deciding to avoid making a wrong choice.

4. "You always have to act alone": the individual is convinced that delegating some of his tasks to others or seeking help to implement them is a sign of personal weakness, so in case of difficulties, they choose procrastination as a strategy to overcome them.

5. "Perfect result without effort": a perfectionist believes that all tasks should be performed with ease. When a difficult situation arises and they realise that they need to make efforts, they postpone them.

Conclusions

Thus, the determinants of procrastination can be divided into two groups:

• permanent, which are stable in time, and subject to little change;

• situational, which arise by chance and develop under the influence of the current situation.

To summarise, procrastination is a kind of emotional reaction of a person to planned or necessary tasks, a person's tendency to postpone their tasks "for later", "for tomorrow", or "for the future".

It is expressed in the desire of higher education students not to start any business, not to make decisions. There is daily (every day), decision-making, neurotic, compulsive, and academic procrastination.

Among the fundamental types of procrastination, researchers distinguish between relaxed (temporary) and tense (chronic).

Our theoretical analysis of the determinants of procrastination among university students allowed us to group them into four groups:

1. Psychological is a lack of motivation in general and for studying in particular; impaired volitional sphere; stress; various types of fear (of the future, success, failure); perfectionism; inability to organise oneself and one's time, build a hierarchy of goals and values, plan one's activities, set priorities; excessive selfconfidence; laziness; helplessness; neglect of one's interests; increased levels of personal anxiety; low self-esteem; weakness of character; lack of readiness to perform; wrong beliefs or a desire to increase the level of stress.

2. Social and psychological - a lack of direct communication with others and excess of virtual communication; external distractions; resistance to external control or personal resistance, disobedience to the external environment; unloved work, boring and unpleasant work to do; parental authoritarianism; social and family problems.

3. Pedagogical - lack of guidance and advice from teachers.

4. Psycho-physiological - health status; diseases; fatigue; temperament; neuroticism; impulsivity; low vitality.

In our opinion, timely psycho-prophylaxis and psycho-correction (if necessary) of students' procrastination will prevent a decrease in their academic performance, and development of personal and professional qualities. Moreover, in turn, it will help the future specialist to be competitive in the modern labour market. In this context, we believe that an empirical study of the relationship between procrastination and academic achievement, students' volitional qualities, its gender aspect and the development of ways to prevent and overcome this phenomenon is promising.

References

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2. Landik, A.O., & Nestoruk, N.A. (2020). "Prokrastynatsiya" yak proyav zakhysnoyi reaktsiyi orhanizmu ["Procrastination" as a manifestation of the body's defense reaction]. S. V. Kovalevskyi & Prof. Dasic Predrag (Eds.). Suchasna osvita - do^^up^i^^, yakist, v^znannya: zbirnyk naukovykh prats XII mizhnarodnoyi naukovo-metodychnoyi konferentsiyi - Modern education - accessibility, quality, recognition: a collection of scientific papers of the 12th international scientific and methodological conference. (pp. 82-85). Kramatorsk: DDMA [in Ukrainian].