Procrastination. This term is familiar to most college students. Dictionary.com defines procrastination as "the act or habit of procrastinating, or putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediate attention." Many students experience procrastination with studying for tests, writing papers, or even writing the Psy1001 blogs. There always seems to be someone procrastinating on something. It seems to be a universal, or at least, national problem for students.
However, could this problem be less universal, and more a personality problem?
This blog post on the Psychology Today website by Timothy A. Pychyl describes the personality traits seen in the Big 5 test that relate to procrastination. Neuroticism is the main trait that correlates positively with procrastination, and surprisingly, Openness to Experience is also positive. According to the research, the more fantasy the person possesses, the more they will procrastinate.
However, many college students may disagree with these statistics, since nearly everyone experiences procrastination on occasion, especially with the new freedom they are experiencing. In my opinion, it wastes time to conclude the reasons for procrastination, instead of just trying to help people with different personalities overcome their procrastination habits. At least the article gives some suggestions to getting the task done at the end.
Even if everybody experiences procrastination on some occasions, there could still be differences in severity, duration, or frequency that may separate people. Also, it's helpful to figure out these kinds of correlations so that after an assessment, you could tell somebody if they are prone to procrastination and give them tools to help fight it.