Motivated Procrastination

Charlotte Cordes, Jana Friedrichsen and Simeon Schudy
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Charlotte Cordes: LMU Munich

No 471, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: Traditionally, economic models have attributed procrastination to present bias. However, procrastination may also arise when individuals derive anticipatory utility from holding motivated, overly optimistic beliefs about the workload they need to complete. This study provides a rigorous empirical test for this notion of `motivated procrastination'. In a longitudinal experiment over four weeks, individuals have to complete a cumbersome task of unknown length. They are exposed to exogenous variation in i) their expectation regarding their workload and ii) scope for motivated reasoning. We find that scope for motivated reasoning allows workers to hold substantially more optimistic beliefs and identify a causal link between the exogenous variation in beliefs and the deferral of work to the future. This systematic belief-based delay of work (motivated procrastination) turns out to be robust to accounting for decision-makers' time preferences and emotional responses, and looms largest for decision makers who tend to not acquire information that may include negative news.

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: 2023-12-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-upt
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Working Paper: Motivated Procrastination (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rco:dpaper:471

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