Sirois, F.M., Stride, C.B. orcid.org/0000-0001-9960-2869 and Pychyl, T.A. (2023) Procrastination and health: a longitudinal test of the roles of stress and health behaviours. British Journal of Health Psychology, 28 (3). pp. 860-875. ISSN 1359-107X
Abstract
Objectives
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.
Design
Three-wave longitudinal study with 1-month intervals.
Methods
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.
Results
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.
Conclusions
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. British Journal of Health Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | procrastination; self-regulation; stress; health behaviours; health problems |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 Mar 2023 12:39 |
Last Modified: | 01 Oct 2024 14:20 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/bjhp.12658 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:196924 |