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pp.293-304
Procrastination is an irrational choice to delay high-priority work in order to avoid its unpleasantness, despite the fact that the negativity will not cease if the work still remains undone. We hypothesized that (1) people underestimate the future negativity (i.e., delay neutralization) and (2) in order to complete work in a timely manner, one should project oneself into the future so as to recognize that the negativity associated with an activity does not diminish over time. Especially, negative future thinking that is unrelated to the consequence was hypothesized to reduce delay neutralization of negativity. In the present study, undergraduate students made a series of choices between delayed-but-longer and immediate-but-shorter assignment by employing an inter-temporal choice paradigm. We tracked how positive and negative episodic future thinking influenced the degree to which negativity is neutralized over time (Experiment 1). Following this, we confined the experimental condition to negative thinking about the future (Experiment 2). Participants neutralized negativity involved in assignment as a function of time, suggesting that procrastination arises from the delay neutralization of the negativity. Critically, such neutralization was significantly reduced when participants imagined a negative future event, but this did not occur when they imagined a positive future event (Experiment 1), or when participants did not think about the future (Experiment 1, 2). Our findings suggest that, prior to making a decision between work and indulgence, imagining negative future events can be an effective way to reduce the neutralization of delayed negativity and, in turn, procrastination.
