Procrastinators start young and get worse with age: study

The tendency to procrastinate begins in early childhood and intensifies as we get older, according to a new study.

The tendency to procrastinate begins in early childhood and intensifies as we get older, according to a new study published in the March issue of the scientific journal Developmental Psychology.

More than just an inconvenient personality trait, the study's authors wrote that persistent procrastination is associated with negative long-term outcomes. People who procrastinate tend to be less organized and struggle with impulse and emotional regulation, as well as time and task management.

To understand how the tendency to procrastinate develops, researchers from the Brock University’s Department of Psychology analyzed the responses of 105 parents who completed a modified version of the General Procrastination Scale (GPS). The GPS is one of the most commonly-used measures of procrastination, and probes for signs of procrastination in different areas of everyday life, including academics, home life and decision making.

Only parents of children between three and six years old were included in the study. This way, the researchers could compare the results from parents of children in preschool with the results from parents of children in kindergarten or Grade 1. The researchers also collected anecdotal examples of children's procrastination tendencies from their parents, including statements such as, "She procrastinates with everything she doesn’t want to do.”

The goal was to study the development of everyday procrastination behaviour in preschool-aged children and to explore its relationship with executive function – which encompasses cognitive abilities responsible for the conscious control of thought and action – and future thinking.

"To date, research has largely focused on academic procrastination in school-age children, adolescents, and adults." the study's authors wrote. "Very little is known about preschool children’s procrastination, particularly in everyday life."

Results revealed that the tendency to procrastinate emerged early in the preschool years, but was more common in older, school-aged children.