The role of passion and emotions in academic procrastination during a pandemic (COVID-19)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110852Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Students procrastinate on tasks that they love.

  • Obsessive passion is related to negative emotions and more procrastination.

  • Harmonious passion is related to positive emotions and less procrastination.

  • Passion and emotions for other activities also predict procrastination.

Abstract

This research examined the role of academic passion and emotions in procrastination. Two studies were conducted with undergraduate students (Study 1: n = 210, 63% male and 37% female, Mage = 26.93 years, SD = 5.94 years; Study 2: n = 303, 59% male and 41% female, Mage = 26.13 years, SD = 7.05 years), including one during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of Study 1 showed that obsessive passion was positively related to negative emotions, whereas harmonious passion was negatively related to negative and positively to positive emotions. In turn, negative emotions positively related to academic procrastination, while positive emotions prevented it. Study 2 replicated the model of Study 1 and extended it to include the role of students' passion and emotions towards their favorite non-academic activity as predictors of academic procrastination. The results of Study 2 showed that passion and emotions for other activities also predict academic procrastination over and beyond academic passion and emotions. These findings provide support for the role of passion and emotions in academic and leisure settings as predictors of academic procrastination behaviors and yield theoretical and practical implications.

Section snippets

Academic procrastination as emotion regulation

Procrastination is traditionally rendered as an undesirable behavior linked with many problematic psychological variables including a positive relationship with neuroticism (Hess, Sherman, & Goodman, 2000), perfectionism (Flett, Blankstein, Hewitt, & Koledin, 1992), and demotivation (Patrzek, Grunschel, & Fries, 2012; Steel, 2007), just to name a few. Many studies have specifically found a significant positive relationship between academic procrastination and negative emotions, such as anxiety

The dualistic model of passion

Passion is defined as a strong inclination towards a given activity that an individual finds important, derives enjoyment from doing, and devotes time and energy pursuing (Vallerand, 2010, Vallerand, 2015; Vallerand et al., 2003). According to the Dualistic Model of Passion (DMP, Vallerand et al., 2003), an activity that an individual is passionate about becomes internalized into their identity, which subsequently fosters the development of a predominant type of passion. More specifically,

The role of passion for a second activity

When students procrastinate, they often put their books down and engage in other exciting activities such as playing video/smartphone games, playing a musical instrument and so on (e.g., Klassen et al., 2010; Pychyl et al., 2000). In such instances, students typically choose to do pleasant activities, despite their responsibilities to start, or complete their academic tasks. Whereas doing another activity is sometimes a planned action (e.g., planned breather leisure coping style, intentional

The role of COVID-19

In the current world climate, students are experiencing elevated levels of negative emotions and distractions due to the global outbreak of COVID-19. The highly contagious novel coronavirus has quickly spread on a global scale with over 19.9 million cases and 732,000 deaths reported worldwide as of August 10th. Earlier this year, The World Health Organization declared this pandemic a global health emergency and upon this announcement, Canadian provinces and American states closed university

The present research

The purpose of the present research was to bridge together the theory of procrastination as a form of emotion regulation and the DMP in two studies, examining the mediating role of emotions between students' passion and academic procrastination. The main goal of Study 1 was to test the role of students' passion and emotions towards their studies in procrastination within the academic context. Based on previous research on passion and affect (e.g., Bonneville-Roussy & Vallerand, 2018; Philippe

Study 1

In Study 1, we examined the relationships between students' passion and emotions towards their studies, and academic procrastination. The overarching hypothesis in the study was that OP for academia would mostly predict negative emotions, and to a lesser extent positive emotions, when students were engaging in academic tasks. Conversely, HP for one's studies should positively predict positive, and negatively predict negative emotions. In turn, negative emotions should positively, whereas

Study 2

In Study 2, we sought to replicate and extend the model presented in Study 1 during the COVID-19 pandemic with respect to one's studies and one's favorite activity as contributors of procrastination (Doty et al., 2020). The principal hypothesis in Study 2 was that the role of academic passion and emotions in procrastination obtained in Study 1 would be replicated. Furthermore, we also predicted that passion and emotions for one's second activity would also serve as predictors of procrastination

General discussion

The principal purpose of the present research was to examine the role of passion for academia in academic procrastination in two separate studies. The second and third objectives of this research were to examine an extended passion and procrastination model in which the mediating role of emotions between students' passion and academic procrastination in both academic (i.e., students' studies) and leisure contexts (i.e., students' favorite activity other than their studies) were assessed during

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Sonia Rahimi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Project administration. Robert J. Vallerand: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of competing interest

We have no conflict of interest to disclose.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge two funders: (1) Chaire de Recherche du Canada sur les Processus Motivationels et le Fonctionnement Optimal, Canada, Grant ID #950-230793, and (2) Recherches Théoriques et Appliquées sur les Processus Motivationnels, Canada, Grant ID 2021-SE3-283171.

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