Understanding Procrastination in First-Year Undergraduates: An Application of Attribution Theory

Despite findings showing first-year undergraduates persistently engage in academic procrastination, research exploring students’ perceived reasons for their procrastination and procrastination-related emotions is lacking. The present exploratory study utilized Weiner’s (2010) attribution theory to examine the relationships between procrastination as well as students’ causal explanations and emotions specific to procrastination. Findings of 429 first-year Canadian undergraduates showed students to attribute procrastination mainly to internal and stable factors, and less so to personally controllable factors. Students who attributed procrastination to reasons within themselves reported higher levels of negative emotions, with strong direct effects of procrastination on negative emotions also observed. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering students’ causal attributions as potential contributors to their emotional experiences surrounding procrastination and encourage future longitudinal research on relations between academic procrastination, attributions, and emotional outcomes.