Research On Time Discounting Difference Between Different Types Of College Student Procrastinators

Procrastination is a very common phenomenon in everyday life, and it affects a lotof people’s learning and work efficiency. As leaders of delaying behaviors, more andmore researchers’ attention is attracted by various characteristics of them. In this study,it explores the time discounting characteristics of different types of studentsprocrastinators, using college students as experimental objects. Time discounting thatwas introduced into the field of psychology by researchers is a concept from economicsfield. The so-called time discounting is the psychological phenomenon that anindividual may underestimate the value of future reward, or that it is a subjectiveassessment of the future value that may decline as time goes by.This article consists of two studies. The first study revises the “ArousalProcrastination Scale” and the “Avoidant Procrastination Scale”, and then explores theoverall level of procrastination of college students with these two scales. In the secondstudy, arousal procrastinators, avoidant procrastinators and non-procrastinators as studytwo subjects are filtered with the two scales. It explores the appearing situation of themagnitude effect, the interval effect and the domain effect, and based on the aboveresearch it explores if there are differences between the three different types ofprocrastinators on these effects. Throughout the second study we use the choice-methodto determine the subjective value of future benefits, and the experimental operation ofthe time discounting is implemented through a computer program. After getting thesubjective value point, it uses the simple hyperbolic equation of the time discounting tocalculate the rate that can express per unit of time discounting.Integrating the results of the first study and the second study, the main conclusionsof this study are as follows:(1)The "Arousal Procrastination Scale" and the "Avoidant Procrastination Scale"both have good reliability and validity, and they can be used as a measurement tool tocheck the level of the arousal procrastination and the avoidant procrastination.(2)The overall procrastination of college students is very serious,88.37%of thegroup showing various degrees of procrastination. The level of the arousal procrastination and the avoidant procrastination has no significant difference in genderand grade of the college students. For the arousal procrastination, the levels of scienceand engineering students is significantly higher than the level of liberal arts majorsstudents; for the avoidant procrastination, there is no significant difference between thestudents of science and engineering and liberal arts majors.(3)There are the magnitude effect, the interval effect and the domain effect of thetime discounting of college students. There is a significant difference between thearousal procrastinators, the avoidant procrastinators and non-procrastinators in the timediscounting rate of the same amount, the same time interval with the same field of thefuture reward, and the different types of procrastinators show different sensitivity for theamount, the time interval and the field of the future reward.