The Moderating Effect of Anxiety on the Relationship Between Episodic Future Thinking and Procrastination

Abstract

Procrastination is still a common problem among university students. It seems to be associated with time perspective and especially with episodic future thinking. People who are good in imagining future events show less procrastination behaviour. Also anxiety might play a role in this relationship as it seems to be correlated with both episodic future thinking and procrastination. To clarify the relationships between those factors we investigated the question whether anxiety has a moderating effect on the relationship between episodic future thinking and procrastination. We included 70 mostly undergraduate students in our analyses. The participants were asked to imagine possible positive and negative study-related future events and to rate the amount of imagined details. They also were asked to answer some questionnaires about procrastination and anxiety. Results showed that episodic future thinking and procrastination were apparently not associated. Anxiety and procrastination in contrast were correlated positively. Students who scored high on anxiety also showed more procrastination behaviour. So a coping-related intervention might be helpful for students who procrastinate a lot.