Motivated Procrastination

Charlotte Cordes, Jana Friedrichsen and Simeon Schudy

No 11072, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Procrastination is often attributed to time-inconsistent preferences but may also arise when individuals derive anticipatory utility from holding optimistic beliefs about their future effort costs. This study provides a rigorous empirical test for this notion of ‘motivated procrastination’. In a longitudinal experiment over four weeks, individuals must complete a cumbersome task of unknown length. We find that exogenous variation in scope for motivated reasoning results in optimistic beliefs among workers, which causally increase the deferral of work to the future. The roots of biased beliefs lie in motivated memory, such that procrastination may persist even if uncertainty is eventually resolved.

Keywords: anticipatory utility; beliefs; memory; motivated cognition; procrastination; real effort; task allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 D84 D90 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-neu and nep-upt
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Working Paper: Motivated Procrastination (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11072

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