Self-Concept Content, Certainty and Stability

In support of our hypotheses, low procrastinators reported possessing significantly fewer negative and procrastination-related attributes than high procrastinators and

demonstrated no significant changes in the content of their wider self-concept as a result of receiving feedback on their academic performance. In contrast, high procrastinators reported possessing a self-concept characterised by a greater number of negative attributes, both in general terms, as well as in the domain of procrastination/task accomplishment, thereby supporting previous self-concept research which found that procrastination was most highly correlated with negative beliefs about one’s ability to accomplish tasks, as well as lower scores on self-perceptions of likeability (Ferrari & Diaz-Morales, 2007). Furthermore, not only did high procrastinators describe a more negative self-concept than low procrastinators, they were also less certain about rejecting such beliefs as self-descriptive; that is, even when reporting that a given negative or procrastination-related attribute was uncharacteristic of them, high procrastinators took significantly longer than low procrastinators to decide that this was the case. This suggests that not only do high procrastinators seem to possess a more negative self-concept than low procrastinators; they also find it more difficult than low procrastinators to reject any given negative or procrastination-related attribute as self- descriptive.

In fact, the results of the present study extend the aforementioned evidence base by providing the first direct experimental evidence that the content of the self-concept of high procrastinators may change, at least for brief periods of time, based on the nature of the performance feedback they receive. Not only did high procrastinators who received a positive evaluation of their academic performance report a significantly less negative self-concept

105 than those who received a negative evaluation, after receiving positive feedback there was a nonsignificant trend for them to change their minds about the negative attributes they reported possessing (p = .06). That is, high procrastinators rejected negative attributes that they had originally reported possessing, after receiving positive feedback for their academic work. These results indicate that rather than simply feeling more or less certain in their negative beliefs about themselves as predicted, high procrastinators actually saw themselves in a significantly different way based on the feedback they received, a finding which was supported by their lower self-reported levels of trait self-concept clarity. Interestingly, the content of high procrastinators’ negative self-beliefs only appeared to be open to influence from positive feedback, as there were no significant changes in negative self-beliefs for high procrastinators who received negative feedback or no feedback. So while there seems to have been enough instability in high procrastinators’ negative beliefs to result in improvements in their self-concept after a positive evaluation, the lack of change after negative or self- evaluation suggests that negative feedback may have been seen as confirmation of existing negative self-beliefs.

Taken together, these findings support previous research which has found a consistent relationship between academic procrastination and low self-esteem (Beck et al., 2000; Beswick et al., 1988; Park & Sperling, 2012; Steel et al., 2001) and research which has shown that people with low self-esteem tend to report self-evaluations characterised by high levels of uncertainty, instability and inconsistency (Baumgardner, 1990; Campbell, 1990; Campbell & Fehr, 1990; Campbell et al., 1991; Campbell et al., 1996). In the case of high procrastinators in our sample, the results suggest that procrastinators’ negative self-beliefs may be improved, at least temporarily, by positive academic performance feedback; however they also indicate that these improvements are unlikely to be retained in the absence of

106 continual positive reinforcement. Further empirical data is necessary to replicate this finding and to assess how long this effect may persist for high procrastinators.

Conversely, while low procrastinators demonstrated less overall certainty in rejecting negative attributes from pre-to post task, the actual number of negative attributes remained stable, and consistently lower than the number endorsed by high procrastinators. Furthermore, the decline in certainty for low procrastinators occurred regardless of whether they received positive, negative or no feedback, indicating that the change was more likely to be related to variables associated with completing the task itself, such as their own evaluation of their performance, or simply the fact that they were asked to complete the same task again, rather than any effect of external feedback.

Hypotheses regarding positive aspects of the self-concept were only partially

supported. Contrary to expectations, both high and low procrastinators reported possessing a similar number of positive attributes and were equally as certain as each other about

possessing them, prior to receiving feedback for the writing task. After receiving feedback, however, this pattern changed; while there were no changes in the content, certainty or stability of positive attributes for low procrastinators, high procrastinators gave significantly different responses about their positive attributes depending on the type of feedback they received. High procrastinators who received negative feedback reported seeing themselves in a significantly less positive way than those who received positive feedback and were also significantly less certain about the positive qualities they endorsed. It therefore seems that while high procrastinators resembled low procrastinators in terms of their views about their positive attributes outside of conditions of evaluation, when faced with negative performance feedback these procrastinators seemed to lose faith in their judgement to the point where their self-concept reports became significantly less positive and their overall certainty in their positive attributes declined. These findings emphasise the importance of employing

107 experimental methods and measuring state-based variables when investigating self-concept variables in procrastinators, as it appears that the instability around academic procrastinators’ perceptions of their positive attributes may only be activated under conditions of evaluation and would therefore not have been captured by studies which did not induce schemata and affective responses associated with an academic performance situation.

In contrast to the differences observed between high and low procrastinators on self- perceptions of positive and negative attributes, the responses of all participants regarding procrastination/task accomplishment attributes changed in similar ways as a result of the type of feedback they received. While high procrastinators described a self-concept characterised by a greater number of procrastination-related attributes and were significantly less certain about rejecting such attributes before completing the academic task, after completing the task, all participants who received negative feedback reported possessing significantly more procrastination-related attributes than those who received positive or no feedback. In this instance it appears that none of the first year psychology students in our sample, regardless of whether or not they procrastinate, were confident enough in their task completion capabilities to remain unaffected by negative feedback from a more experienced academic.