![]() This perspective is still present in the psychological literature on procrastination, which may be considered as resulting from self-regulation failure or ‘weakness of the will’ 6, 17, 18. For ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, procrastination is a prototypical case of akrasia, which designates a lack of self-control leading to act against one’s best judgment. This definition has been refined by psychologists as the unnecessary but voluntary delaying of task completion (either requested or intended) despite potential harmful outcomes 4, 6, 15, 16. This questionnaire-based approach offers no mechanistic insight into the emergence of procrastination, which would require an operational definition at the cognitive level.Īs suggested by its etymology (crastinus is a Latin word for tomorrow), the common meaning of procrastination is to postpone duties from one day to the next. Neuroimaging studies have not gone beyond correlations between procrastination scores on self-report questionnaires and brain anatomy, resting-state activity 8, 9, 10, 11, or task-related activity 12, 13, 14. However, the causal pathways through which genes could shape the brain architecture so as to produce procrastination behavior are not elucidated. Procrastination is considered a stable trait-like behavior 6, with significant heritability demonstrated by twin studies 7. Despite its high prevalence, affecting ~70% of students 4 and up to 20% of adults 5, and its major economic or health consequences, the mechanisms leading to procrastination remain poorly understood. People do so although knowing about potential adverse consequences, such as financial difficulty 1, 2 or health damage 3. Thus, procrastination might stem from a cognitive bias that would make doing a task later (compared to now) appear as much less effortful but not much less rewarding.Īlmost all humans procrastinate to some extent, either on filling tax returns, paying bills, saving for retirement, or quitting addictive behaviors like smoking or gambling. The key feature that is associated with procrastination behavior across individuals (both in-lab and at-home) is the extent to which the expected effort cost (signaled by the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) is attenuated by the delay before task completion. These procrastination behaviors are respectively modeled as unitary and repeated decisions to postpone a task until the next time step, based on a net expected value that integrates reward and effort attributes, both discounted with delay. Procrastination is assessed in the laboratory as the preference for performing an effortful task on the next day as opposed to immediately, and at home as the delay taken in returning completed administrative forms. ![]() Here, we use fMRI during intertemporal choice to inform a computational model that predicts procrastination behavior in independent tests. ![]() Yet, the neuro-computational mechanisms underlying procrastination remain poorly understood. Humans procrastinate despite being aware of potential adverse consequences. ![]()
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