PRE-CRASTINATION IN COGNITIVE TASKS

Publication Date

4-5-2019

Document Type

Poster

Degree Type

Undergraduate

Department

Psychology

Mentor

Dawn McBride

Mentor Department

Psychology

Abstract

Pre-crastination is the tendency to complete a task sooner, even if it requires exerting extra effort. This concept was first introduced by Rosenbaum, Gong, and Potts (2014) in a bucket carrying task. When participants were presented with the bucket carrying task, it was found that individuals preferred to pick up the close bucket instead of the far bucket, although picking up the close bucket meant carrying it for a longer distance and exerting more effort. In the current study, we asked whether pre-crastination occurs in cognitive tasks. Participants were given a choice to either generate a longer list of words from a given category before starting a box moving task or generate a shorter list of words from that category after finishing a box moving task. We hypothesized that individuals will be more likely to pre-crastinate (generate more items before starting the box moving task), despite the increased cognitive load than to procrastinate (generate fewer items after finishing the box moving task). Data collection is still in process, and we have a target of at least 90 participants.

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