The Influence Of Indecisivenesson Inaction Inertia

Indecisiveness means an individual tendency that when making decision in any field, people will feel difficult or prefer to evade decision-making. Previous studies have discovered that indecisiveness traits have close relationship with many other personality variables, such as neuroticism, perfectionism, hoarding, procrastination, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and they also have significant impact on many problems of profession or career choice. Inaction inertia refers specifically to the tendency of a person who already has passed up a similar, more attractive opportunity to omit acting on a second, somewhat less desirable opportunity (even if it still represents a gain from one normal reference point) The present paper firstly explored the applicability of Indecisiveness Scale (prepared by Germeiji and Boeck in2002) for Chinese undergraduates, and then studied the influence of indecisiveness on this inaction inertia effect (a type of decision-avoidance behavior).Study1aimed at testing the reliability and validity of indecisiveness scale with the permission of the original author. The results showed that, the inter-item consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s a) of the scale was0.828and the test-retest reliability after two weeks was0.802; the scale had significant correlations with the Trait Anxiety and Self-Esteem Scale, and the correlation coefficient was0.526and0.412respectively; indecisiveness traits had significant gender difference (t=-4.209, p=0.00<0.01), and the indecisiveness of women were significantly higher than men; study2first tested the inaction inertia of individuals adopting the situational approach, and then measured the individuals’ indecisiveness traits with indecisiveness scale. It was found that people with low indecisiveness showed more inaction inertia.In a whole, this study made the following conclusions:(1) Indecisiveness scale had better reliability and validity;(2) There was significant gender difference in indecisiveness; women were more indecisiveness than men;(3) People with low indecisiveness showed more inaction inertia.