Procrastination and creativity, the role of time pressure and difficulty

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Procrastination and creativity, the role

of time pressure and difficulty

Wouter Warnaar

10820574

Bachelor Thesis University of Amsterdam Faculty of Economics and Business Supervisor: dr. Wendelien van Eerde

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Student Wouter Warnaar who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Acknowledgements

For the completion of my bachelor of science thesis I would like to thank dr. W. van Eerde for supervising, supporting and advising me during my work on this thesis. She challenged me during the writing of my BSc Thesis and has provided me with a lot of helpful feedback.

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Abstract

The phenomenon procrastination affects 80-95% of all college students (Steel, 2007). However, little is known about the effects of the degree of procrastination on creativity. This study attempts to answer what the effect of the degree of procrastination is on creativity, by testing a mediating role of

perceived time pressure and perceived task difficulty on a creative task. The study uses a survey consisting of 140 participants to gather the data. The results prove insignificant relations with all variables provided in the Hypotheses, leading to the rejection of all four Hypotheses and no

confirmation of the assumptions made based on the literature. However significant results were found in the testing of the Hypotheses in control variables, such as age and employment status.

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Introduction

‘Never put off till tomorrow what may be done the day after tomorrow as well’ - Mark Twain

Procrastination is a recurring phenomenon in the past decades, the research of Steel (2007) stated that 80%-95% of all college students engage in procrastination. Many of these procrastinators claim that even when they start to work at the last minute, they can still finish on time and that they tend to work better and faster or generate more creative ideas under time pressure. The results of finding predictive variables for procrastination should contribute to a better understanding of procrastinators and their creativity, and ultimately lead to new insights on how to control procrastination and even boost creativity. This could have a positive impact on a country’s economy, for example the Netherlands, where education is partially government funded. For example by simply reducing the average time a student needs to graduate, due to controlling or even eliminating procrastination. Furthermore

businesses could benefit as well by the controlling or elimination of procrastination through becoming more efficient as a result. Much research has been done regarding procrastination however a

limitation is that most of the research is mainly focused on students (Van Eerde, 2015). The aim of this study therefore is to uncover the relationship between procrastination and creativity, primarily focused on the behavior of procrastinators towards creative tasks and which other variables, such as time pressure and task difficulty influence their creativity in a more general sample of people.

Procrastination

Milgram and Levison (1997) give the following definition of procrastination: ‘procrastination is typically defined as a trait or behavioral disposition to postpone or delay performing tasks or making decisions’. Procrastinating is irrationally delaying something while knowing you will be worse off by doing it (van Eerde & Klingsieck, 2018). This line of thought on procrastination suggests that there might be more than one type of procrastinator and that in some cases procrastination

behavior might lead to positive outcomes, and this was identified as ‘active’ procrastination in contrast to the more conventional, irrational ‘passive’ procrastination (Chun, Chu & Choi, 2005). Chun, Chu and Choi (2005) describe active procrastinators as people who procrastinate on a certain

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task in order to focus more on other, more urgent tasks. The increased time pressure resulting from the procrastination leads to a better motivation and thus a better performance on the tasks. However Chowdhury and Pychyl (2018) showed that the research by Chun Chu and Choi (2005) was

fundamentally flawed, misconstruing purposeful, deliberate delay as procrastination. Chowdhury and Pychyl (2018) mention the strong empirical support for research of Haghbin and Pychyl (2015), who came up with six different types of delay. From these different types of delay it can be concluded that the active procrastination is a combination of purposeful and arousal delay, and therefore not

procrastination by definition. They also discuss that active procrastination researchers lacked in truly validating active procrastination by not assessing the influence of self-regulatory, which has been found to be an important antecedent to active procrastination. More so, they conclude that they found no support for a positive form of procrastination. Therefore Chowdhury and Pychyl (2018) end their research with claiming that by labeling this delay as active procrastination, the label becomes inaccurate and misleading.

Tice and Baumeister (1997) conclude from their research that the benefits of procrastination are eventually offset by the costs of it, since their results show that the stress and illness assimilated by procrastinators late in the task exceed and outweigh the initial benefits. They also state the following: ‘procrastination appears to result in work of inferior quality’. The research shows that procrastinators are suffering more while performing worse than non-procrastinators (e.g., Steel, 2007; Van Eerde, 2003). As mentioned before, procrastination among students in particular is an issue. A recent study by Rabin, Fogel and Nutter-Upham (2011) concluded on the basis of previous research that

approximately 30% to 60% of undergraduate students report regular procrastination. They found that initiation, planning and organizational skills are a predictive factors of academic procrastination. Other significant predictors for academic procrastination that they found were: age and depression. Age as a significant predictor for academic procrastination is explained by a decrease in the students motivation. This can consecutively be explained by that the longer a student remains in school or the more a student is involved in extracurricular activities, the student becomes less motivated to perform

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its academic tasks. Depression as a significant predictor for academic procrastination is explained by mostly a decrease in energy levels, making the students more task aversive.

In a study by Beck, Koons and Milgrim (2000), who researched the correlation and consequences of behavioral procrastination, they concluded that only students with high SAT scores performed well if they did not procrastinate or attend lectures or both. Whilst the performance of students with low and medium SAT scores was irrelevant to whether they procrastinated or not. The test performance was examined as a combination of lecture attendance, behavioral procrastination and SAT scores. They also found that individuals with a tendency towards self-handicapping and who have a high level of self-esteem are significantly more prone to engage in procrastination. However, they mention that their measured high scores of self-esteem were as a result of social desirability.

Van Eerde (2003) performed a meta-analysis examining the relation between procrastination and personality variables, motives, affect and performance. A noticeable finding in the meta-analysis was that younger people are more likely to procrastinate compared to older people, even within a sample consisting primarily of college students. This is contrary to the study mentioned above by Rabin, Fogel and Nutter-Upham (2011), who concluded that age was a significant predictor for academic procrastination.

However, what lacks in the literature is research on the influence of procrastination on creativity. How procrastination affects creativity and what role perceived time pressure and task difficulty play in affecting creativity could benefit procrastinators in dealing with procrastination. Furthermore as mentioned before, it could lead to various economic benefits.

Creativity, Procrastination, and Time Pressure

Runco and Jaeger (2012) provide a definition of creativity that requires two criteria for a particular behavior to be creative. It should have originality and effectiveness. If a particular thing is unusual, novel or unique, it is commonplace, mundane or conventional and therefore not original nor creative. However originality by itself is not sufficient to make a particular thing creative, it could be original but useless. Original things must be effective in order to become creative (Runco & Jaeger,

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2012). The effectiveness can be measured in different forms, it can be usefulness or fit, or of economic value.

There are different ways to measure creativity, one of them being self-report creativity scales. A research by Silvia, Wigert, Reiter-Palmon and Kaufman (2012) show that the state of self-report creativity assessment is much better than creativity researchers believe it is. Hocevar (1981) for example concluded in his article that self-report creativity assessments are often insufficient indicators of creativity due to the respondents inability to distinguish creativity from other traits. Silvia et al. however, advise researchers to use as many measurement tools as possible, that includes the self-report scales they reviewed but also those that weren’t included in their review and evaluation. Many people claim that even when they start to work at the last minute, they can still finish on time and that they tend to work better and faster or generate more creative ideas under time pressure. In a study done by Prahu, Sutton and Sauser (2008), results showed that creativity is closely related to openness to experience and self efficacy. They also found that intrinsic motivation is partially

mediating the relationship between creativity and openness to experience whilst fully mediating the relationship between creativity and self-efficacy. This is particularly interesting since Steel (2007) showed in his meta-analysis that there is a very low relationship between openness to experience and procrastination, and that procrastination represents low conscientiousness and self-regulatory failure. Which leads to the assumption that low relationship of procrastinators with openness to experience results in a negative effect on creativity. Steel (2007) also showed that the more people dislike a task, the more they will consider the task effortful or anxiety producing and therefore the more they will procrastinate. The low relationship between openness to experience and procrastination, whilst there is a close relationship between openness to experience and creativity indicate that procrastinators will have high task aversiveness towards a creative task. As a consequence of the task aversiveness, they are likely to perform worse than non-procrastinators on creative tasks due to low motivation. King, Walker and Broyles (1996) conducted a research on creativity and the five-factor model of personality. The five-factor model consists of five personality dimensions: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (Digman, 1990). One of the findings

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in their research is a significant conscientiousness by creative ability interaction, their results showed that at low levels of creative ability conscientiousness was positively associated with creative

accomplishments. Whilst at medium and high levels of creative ability conscientiousness was negatively associated with creative accomplishments.

Combining the results of the meta-analysis by Steel (2007) with the research of King, Walker and Broyles (1996) imply that there is a relationship between procrastination and creativity and the subsequent performance. The first two hypotheses derive from the above provided literature.

Hypothesis 1: The degree of procrastination is negatively related to skipping a creative task. Hypothesis 2: The degree of procrastination is negatively related to the performance on a creative

task.

A different research, conducted by Andrews and Farris (1972), on time pressure and performance (innovation and productiveness) of scientists and engineers showed interesting results. In their study Andrew and Farris concluded that there was a positive relationship between time pressure and subsequent productivity, which indicates that time pressure may enhance performance. Also, they found that time pressure was positively related to subsequent innovation. They found their results intriguing since in the view of the folklore they mention in their research that scientists, especially those that do creative work, need a relaxed environment. However their data shows not only that innovation was enhanced under time pressure, but also more routine aspects of scientific performance. Multiple studies have been done to test the influence of time pressure on creativity with different outcomes. Baer and Oldham (2006) conducted a research in response to prior research regarding time pressure and creativity which showed generally weak and inconclusive results. In their research they tested whether a curvilinear (inverted U) relation between experienced time pressure and creativity exists. They found that only in combination with other variables there was an effect, the effect was only found for those high on openness to experience as a personality factor who experienced support for their creativity. Combined with the researches of Prahu et al. (2008) and Steel (2007) one could

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argue that because of the low relationship between openness to experience and procrastination, the relationship of time pressure as a result of procrastination, will result in a negative effect on creativity whilst also increasing the perceived time pressure on creative tasks for procrastinators. This argument is supported by the research of Amabile, Hadley and Kramer (2002), which concludes that creativity suffers when exposed to extreme time pressures.

Haycock, McCarthy and Skay (1998) concluded in their research that procrastination was significantly and positively related to both state and trait anxiety. However they mention that the relationship between procrastination and anxiety could have been mediated by efficacy expectations. The meta-analysis of Byron and Khazanchi (2011) showed that anxiety is significantly and negatively related to creative performance. They also showed in their research that when a creative task becomes more complex, anxiety becomes more negatively related to creative performance. The third

hypothesis derives from the above mentioned arguments.

Hypothesis 3:The degree of procrastination is positively related to perceived time pressure whilst

doing a creative task.

Creativity, Procrastination and Task Difficulty

There is prior research done with regard to the effect of task difficulty on procrastination. Janssen and Carton (1999) found no support for their hypothesis stating that students who receive a difficult assignment will procrastinate more than those who receive an easy assignment. Increased task complexity provokes increased task difficulty, as measured by Robinson (2001), the research concluded that the complex version of his task was not only rated significantly more difficult, but also significantly more stressful. The creative task becoming more difficult and therefore more stressful indicates that task difficulty for procrastinators will lead to more procrastination and therefore more time pressure and stress, ultimately leading to a worse creative performance on the task. Also, in a study by Crescenzi, Capra, Arguello (2013) results showed that participants under no time pressure felt the task was less difficult than those who were under time pressure. This could indicate that

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procrastinators will experience tasks in general as more difficult due to the increased time pressure they will experience by procrastinating.

In a research conducted by Yang, Thompson and Bland (2012) on task difficulty and time pressure on nurses confidence calibration in a high fidelity clinical simulation, findings showed a significant interaction between time pressure and task difficulty on the confidence of the nurses. The results of Yang et al. can be combined with the meta analysis of van Eerde (2003), which showed that efficacy has a negative correlation with procrastination. A person’s confidence is part of one’s self-efficacy. Since confidence is significantly interacting with time pressure and task difficulty, increased perceived time pressure and perceived task difficulty by being a procrastinator can be assumed to interact with the creativity of a person doing a creative task. This implication led to the formulation of the fourth and final hypothesis.

Hypothesis 4:The degree of procrastination is positively related to the perceived difficulty whilst

doing a creative task.

Purpose and scope of study

As described above, little research has been done with regard to the influence of

procrastination on creativity with the variables perceived time pressure and perceived difficulty. Possibly, the variables in combination with procrastination could affect creativity and its performance. The behavior of procrastinators will be assessed regarding creativity and their rating of perceived task difficulty and time pressure during a creative task will be gathered. Therefore in an attempt to

contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between procrastination, creativity, perceived time pressure and perceived difficulty, this study will test the following hypotheses as mentioned above: The degree of procrastination is negatively related to skipping a creative task (1) and to the performance of the creative task (2), whilst positively related to perceived time pressure during a creative task (3) and to perceived difficulty during a creative task (4). These hypotheses will be tested using the following control variables: gender, age, level of education and employment status.

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Method

This research will be quantitative, the data gathering will be conducted via an online survey and the data processing will be done through SPSS. The full survey can be found in Appendix 7.1 and the complete SPSS output can be found in Appendix 7.2. The population are humans in general. The sample consisted of 140 persons, which consisted of 71 males, 65 females and 1 other gender (M =

1.49, SD = .516). No clear distinctions were made on nationality/origin. Three persons did not specify

their gender. From the sample, 124 respondents specified their age, ranging from 14 to 76(M = 35.18,

SD = 17.58), making the sample mostly consisting of adults. In the sample, 134 respondents specified

the highest level of education they completed ranging form 1 to 6, where 1 (5.0%) = Less than a high school diploma, 2 (20.7%) = High school degree or equivalent, 3 (44.3%) = Bachelor’s degree (e.g. BA, BS), 4 (18.6%) = Master’s degree (e.g. MA, MS, MEd), 5 (3.6%) = Doctorate (e.g. PhD, edD), 6 (3.6%) = Other (please specify).

Measures

The creative task described in the hypotheses above, will be referred to as ‘alternative uses task’ in this section. In this section, the different measurements of all variables used in the testing of the hypotheses will be described.

Procrastination

In order to measure procrastination, the short version, 9-item version of the procrastination scale developed by Lay (1986), as seen in Appendix A, was used in this research (Sirois et al., 2019). Responses were recorded on a 5-point scale, where 1 = Extremely Uncharacteristic, 2 = Moderately Uncharacteristic, 3 = Neutral, 4 = Moderately Characteristic, 5 = Extremely Characteristic. By reverse scoring three of the nine items, all items are indicating the same direction, where higher values indicate a greater tendency towards procrastination.

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Willingness to perform the alternative uses task

In order to measure creativity, respondents are asked to complete an alternative uses task. This task lets the respondent list as many different uses they can think of an ordinary brick within three minutes. The execution of the alternative uses task was measured by the question: ‘In the following question, you'll have 3 minutes to think of different ways that you can use a specific item, followed by additional questions about how you handled the task. This last section of the survey is entirely optional, however, we'd greatly appreciate the effort in filling out the responses. Furthermore, you are eligible to win a voucher of €20 if you complete this task. Would you like to proceed?’ with a yes or no response, where: 1= Yes, 0 = No.

Experienced time pressure during the alternative uses task

This variable consists of part of the sample, namely only the people that were willing to perform the alternative uses task. Experienced time pressure of the alternative uses task will be measured on a 1-5 Likert scale, where: 32 = Very Low, 33 = Low, 3 = Moderate, 4 = High, 5 = Very High.

Experienced task difficulty during the alternative uses task

Experienced task difficulty will be measured on a 1-5 Likert scale, where: 32 = Very Low, 33 = Low, 34 = Moderate, 35 = High, 36 = Very High.

Performance of the alternative uses task

The performance of the alternative uses task is measured on a 1-5 scale where 1 = Not at all creative, 2 = Slightly creative, 3 = Creative, 4 = Very creative, 5 = Extremely creative. Three independent raters scored the creativeness of every idea generated by the respondents. All ideas a respondent came up with were individually rated and then averaged as a final performance score per respondent. The Cohen’s kappa between the raters were .657, .708 and .773

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Control variables

In an attempt to isolate the effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable, several control variables were used. The first control variable is Gender which was measured on a 3 option response, where 1 = Male, 2 = Female, 3 = Other. The second control variable is Age, which was measured in years. The third control variable is Education, which was measured on a 1-6 scale, where 1 = Less than a high school diploma, 2= High school degree or equivalent, 3= Bachelor’s degree (e.g. BA, BS), 4 = Master’s degree (e.g. MA, MS, MEd), 5= Doctorate (e.g. PhD, edD), 6= Other (please specify). The fourth control variable is Employment which is measured on a 1-8 scale, where 1 = Employed full-time (40+hours a week), 2 = Employed part-time (less than 40 hours a week), 3 = Unemployed (currently looking for work), 4 = Unemployed (not currently looking for work), 5 = Student, 6 = Retired, 7 = Self-employed, 8 = Unable to work.

Analytical plan

To test Hypothesis 1, the relation between procrastination and the respondent skipping the alternative uses task will be determined through a binominal logistic regression, due to the binary nature of the dependent variable. In order to test Hypothesis 2, being a procrastinator has negative effect on the performance of a creative task; Hypothesis 3, procrastinators experience more time pressure on a creative task; and Hypothesis 4, procrastinators experience a creative task as more difficult, linear regressions will be ran.

Results

In order to test the Hypotheses the following assumptions were made and tested: relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable is linear, the residuals are normally distributed, there is homoscedasticity of residuals and there is no multicollinearity. For all Hypotheses the above mentioned assumptions have been met, except for the residuals not being normally distributed for Hypothesis 3, see appendix. In table 1: the descriptive statistic and correlations of the independent, dependent and control variables is given. All hypotheses are tested with a significance level of 5%.

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Table 1:

Descriptive statistics and correlations.

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. Procrastinati ona 2.89 .77 (.867) 2. Genderb 1.49 .516 -.102 3. Agec 35.19 17.58 -.314** -.021 4. Difficultyd 33.48 1.095 .119 .181 -.308** 5. Time pressuree 32.63 .897 -.046 .005 -.047 .281* 6. Educationf 3.06 1.05 -.168 -.027 .344** -.120 -.240* 7. Employmentg 3.7 2.15 .179* -.110 .067 .025 .180 -.068 8. Alternative uses taskh 1.21 .41 -.170 .109 -.054 .C _.C _{-.111 -.016} 9. Performancei 1.873 .405 .016 -.120 -.131 -.129 .249* -.102 -.026 .C

Notes. N = 140. Cronbach’s Alpha is in the parenthesis on the diagonal. a_{1 = Extremely}

Uncharacteristic, 2 = Moderately Uncharacteristic, 3 = Neutral, 4 = Moderately Characteristic, 5 = Extremely Characteristic. b _{1 = Male, 2 = Female, 3 = Other.}c_{Age was measured in years.}d_{32 = Very}

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Low, 33 = Low, 34 = Moderate, 35 = High, 36 = Very High.e_{32 = Very Low, 33 = Low, 3 =}

Moderate, 4 = High, 5 = Very High. f _{1 = Less than a high school diploma, 2= High school degree or}

equivalent, 3= Bachelor’s degree (e.g. BA, BS), 4 = Master’s degree (e.g. MA, MS, MEd), 5= Doctorate (e.g. PhD, edD), 6= Other (please specify). g _{1 = Employed full-time (40+hours a week), 2}

= Employed part-time (less than 40 hours a week), 3 = Unemployed (currently looking for work), 4 = Unemployed (not currently looking for work), 5 = Student, 6 = Retired, 7 = Self-employed, 8 = Unable to work. h_{1= Yes, 0 = No.}I _{1 = Not at all creative, 2 = Slightly creative, 3 = Creative, 4 =}

Very creative, 5 = Extremely creative. * p < .05

** p < .01

To test Hypothesis 1: procrastinators will skip a creative task more often, a binomial logistic

regression was run. In this binomial logistic the alternative uses task skip was the dependent variable. Gender and age served as the control variables in block 1, the mean procrastination was the

independent variable in block 2. The results of block 1 show that the fit of the model relative to the null model has an insignificant result (Chi-square .626, p-value = .731). The regression coefficients of gender (p-value .465) and age are both insignificant (p-value = .614). Block 2 shows that there is no significant improvement to the model after adding mean procrastination as an independent variable (Chi-square 4.320, p-value = .229). The regression coefficients of gender value = .662), age (p-value = .363) and of the mean procrastination (p-(p-value = .071) are all insignificant. The above described results led to the rejection of Hypothesis 1.

To test Hypothesis 2: Being a procrastinator has negative effect on the performance on a creative task, a linear regression was run. Gender, age, level of education and employment status were the control variables in block one. The mean procrastination was the independent variable in block 2. The regression showed an insignificant relation between the dependent variable (MeanPerformance) and the control variables (R Square = .036, Sig. F Change = .647). By adding the mean procrastination as an independent variable in block 2, also resulted in an insignificant relation between de dependent

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variable and the independent variable (Sig. F Change = .407). The model also didn’t improve much by adding block 2 (R Square Change = .010). Taking the results from the linear regression together, Hypothesis 2 is also rejected.

To test Hypothesis 3: Procrastinators experience more time pressure on a creative task, again a linear regression was run. In this linear regression perceived time pressure was the dependent variable. Gender, age, level of education and employment status were the control variables in block one. The mean procrastination was the independent variable in block 2. There was an insignificant relation between the dependent variable and the control variables (R Square = .154, Sig. F Change = .053). Adding the mean procrastination as an independent variable in block 2 resulted in minor increase of the variance being explained. (R Square Change = .023), however it was insignificant (Sig. F Change = .188), which indicates no mediation. The coefficients table showed that perceived difficulty has a significant positive relation with perceived time pressure (p-value = .025). The results of the linear regression lead to the rejection of Hypothesis 3.

To test Hypothesis 4: Procrastinators experience a creative task as more difficult, another linear regression was run. In this linear regression perceived difficulty was the dependent variable. Gender, age, level of education and employment status were the control variables in block one. The mean procrastination was the independent variable in block 2. There was a significant relation between the dependent variable and the control variables (R Square = .138, Sig. F Change = .011). Adding the mean procrastination as an independent variable in block 2 resulted in minimal increase of the

variance being explained. (R Square Change = .001), the relationship was insignificant (Sig. F Change = .498), which indicates no mediation. The coefficients table showed that Age has a highly significant negative relation with perceived task difficulty (p-value = .009). After adding the mean

procrastination in the model, Age still had a highly significant relation with perceived task difficulty (p-value = .017). The results of the last linear regression lead to rejection of Hypothesis 4.

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Discussion

The purpose of this study was to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between procrastination, creativity, perceived time pressure and perceived difficulty. This was done by testing the relationship between procrastination and skipping the alternative uses task (1), testing the

relationship between procrastination and the performance on the alternative uses task (2), testing the relationship between procrastination and the perceived time pressure during the alternative uses task (3) and testing the relationship between procrastination and the perceived difficulty during the alternative uses task (4).

The first Hypothesis examined whether the degree procrastination is a predictor of task aversiveness towards a creative task. The insignificant results do not assent with the assumption made on the basis of the research of Prabhu et al. (2008) and the research Steel (2007), that due to the low relationship between openness to experience and procrastination, whilst there is a close relationship between openness to experience and creativity, procrastinators will have high task aversiveness towards a creative task.

The second Hypothesis examined whether the degree procrastination has a negative effect on the performance of a creative task. Combining again the research of Prabhu et al. (2008) and Steel (2007) led to assumption that due to low intrinsic motivation as a result of task aversiveness, the performance of procrastinators on a creative task will be worse. The insignificant results do not confirm this assumption.

The third Hypothesis examined whether the degree of procrastination has a positive relationship with the perceived time pressure during a creative task. The research of Haycock et al. (1998) provided a significant and positive relation between procrastination and anxiety, combined with the research of Amabile et al. (2002) which stated that time pressure leads to a decrease in creativity, led to the assumption that when the degree of procrastination increases it consequently increases the degree of perceived time pressure. The insignificant results do not confirm the assumption made.

The fourth and final hypothesis examined whether the degree of procrastination has a positive relationship with the perceive task difficulty of a creative task. The significant interaction between

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time pressure and task difficulty on confidence in the research of Yang et al. (2012) combined with the results of the meta-analysis of van Eerde (2003) which showed a significant interaction between procrastination and self-efficacy led to the assumption that the degree of procrastination has a positive relationship with the perceived task difficulty. With no significant results found when testing the fourth hypothesis, this assumption cannot be confirmed.

However the results of the linear regressions show a highly significant negative relationship between age and perceived task difficulty as well as a significant positive relationship between time pressure and task difficulty. The highly significant relation between age and the degree of procrastination is in line with the results of van Eerde (2003) and Rabin et al. (2011). These findings show that in this context procrastination has no direct relationship with creativity, however the findings do show that age and perceived task difficulty are related as well as time pressure and task difficulty. The latter might play a significant role in mediating procrastination and creativity in a different context. A clear limitation of this research is its inability to produce significant results based on assumptions made through prior research. An explanation for not finding significant relationships between the degree of procrastination, creativity, perceived time pressure and perceived task difficulty in this study is that during the survey there is little room for procrastination. The inability for procrastinators to manifest their procrastinative behavior could make the results differ when the same variables are tested again in a research that enables the participant to actively procrastinate during the experiment or survey. Therefore it could be concluded that this study used the wrong format to correctly test the relationship of the degree of procrastination, perceived time pressure and perceived task difficulty towards creativity. However the results of this study show that age could prove to be a major explanatory factor when testing the influence of procrastination, time pressure and task difficulty on creativity in for example a format in which participants are able to let their procrastination manifest during the experiment. The results of a study like that could find more significant results due to a participant being able to procrastinate or not during the experiment, rather than only giving a self-rated procrastination score. If the results of that study turn out to be significant, it might show that age does in fact play a significant role in predicting procrastination and creativity. This would encourage

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more researchers to study the phenomenon of procrastination itself with regard to the significant variables related to different ages. Is procrastination a phenomenon that only exists until a person has reached a certain age? If true predictors of procrastination are found regarding age, the practical implications could be immense. It might also turn out that employment status, plays an important role in understanding procrastination (as seen in Table 1, Pearson Correlation with Procrastination = .179*, significant at the .05 level). Procrastinators could be helped in dealing with their

procrastination possibly resulting in an increase in creativity among these persons when they are able to manage these predictors. As mentioned in the introduction this could have positive consequences for the general economy of a country as well as have a positive influence the efficiency of businesses.

Conclusion

To conclude, the findings in this research show that there is no clear relationship between the degree of procrastination and creativity nor a mediating relationship of perceived time pressure or perceived task difficulty. This leads to the rejection of all four Hypotheses in this paper, however the findings do probe more questions around procrastination and creativity. Providing a highly significant correlation between age and the degree of procrastination and a significant correlation between the degree of procrastination and employment status. Furthermore, the linear regressions show a highly significant negative relationship between age and perceived task difficulty as well as a significant positive relationship between time pressure and task difficulty. The literature provided combined with the significant results that were found imply that there is more to be found regarding procrastination and creativity. With the right experimental format true predictors of procrastination and creativity should be found.

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Appendix

Appendix A (survey)

Q1 - What is your gender?

# What is your gender?

1 Male

2 Female

3 Other

Q2 - What is your age?

Q5 - What is your highest level of education you have completed / currently

enrolled?

#

What is your highest level of education you have completed / currently enrolled? - Selected Choice

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2 High school degree or equivalent

3 Bachelor's degree (e.g. BA, BS)

4 Master's degree (e.g. MA, MS, MEd)

5 Doctorate (e.g. PhD, edD)

6 Other (please specify)

Q6 - What is your employment status?

# What is your employment status?

1 Employed full-time (40+hours a week)

2 Employed part-time (less than 40 hours a week)

3 Unemployed (currently looking for work)

4 Unemployed (not currently looking for work)

5 Student

6 Retired

7 Self-employed

8 Unable to work

Q7 - Please be as honest and accurate as you can throughout. Try not to let

your response to one statement influence your responses to other

statements. There are no "correct" or "incorrect" answers. Answer

according to your own feelings, rather than how you think "most people"

would answer.

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# Question False Not usually true for me Sometimes false/true for me Mostly true for me True for me 1

I often find myself performing tasks that I had intended to do days before.

2

Even with jobs that require little else except sitting down and doing them, I find they seldom get done for days. 3 I generally delay before starting

work I have to do.

4

In preparing for some deadlines, I often waste time by doing other things. 5 I often have a task finished

sooner than necessary. 6 I usually buy even an essential

item at the last minute. 7 I usually accomplish all the

things I plan to do in a day. 8 I am continually saying I’ll do it

tomorrow.

9

I usually take care of all the tasks I have to do before I settle down and relax for the evening.

Q29 - In the following question, you'll have 3 minutes to think of different

ways that you can use a specific item, followed by additional questions

about how you handled the task. This last section of the survey is entirely

optional, however, we'd greatly appreciate the effort in filling out the

responses. Furthermore, you are eligible to win a voucher of €20 if you

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#

In the following question, you'll have 3 minutes to think of different ways that you can use a specific item, followed by additional questions about how you handled the task. This last section of the survey is entirely optional, however, we'd greatly appreciate the effort in filling out the responses. Furthermore, you are eligible to win a voucher of €20 if you complete this task. Would you like to proceed?

1 Yes

2 No

Q23 - Please indicate how you found the task:

# Question None at all A little A moderate amount A lot A great deal 1 Difficult

2

Too short, I felt time pressure

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Appendix B (SPSS output) Hypothesis 1

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Procrastination and creativity, the role of time pressure and difficulty