Procrastination, Perfectionism, Coping and Their Relation to Distress and Self Esteem in College Students

Procrastination is described as the irrational tendency to postpone or delay tasks (Lay, 1986) It is widespread among the general population (Harriott Ferrari, 1996) and is considered maladaptive due to its associations with low self esteem and distress (Stead, Shanahan, Neufeld, 2010; Steel, 2007) Students are particularly vulnerable to engage in procrastination as they are faced with the task of meeting multiple goals, within specified time frames. Students consider procrastination as being problematic (Solomon Rothblum, 1984) Procrastination is not a unitary construct and researchers distinguish between active and passive procrastinators. Passive procrastinators are those who fail to complete the tasks on time, whereas active procrastinators are said to be those who postpone their task until the last minute and work better under pressure (Chu Choi, 2005) Procrastination also includes behavioral, cognitive and affective dimensions (Rice, Richardson, Clark, 2012).Procrastination among Indian college students has been examined by several researchers highlighting the negative relationship between procrastination, academics and daily routines (Gohil, 2014; Lakshminarayan, Potdar, Reddy, 2011; Manikandan Sebin, 2013).While various factors are likely to result in task postponement, perfectionism is one factor that has been studied in relation to procrastination. The term perfectionism is used to refer to a pattern of setting high personal standards for one's performance, along with excessive self criticality. Perfectionism is considered to be a multi dimensional construct (Hewitt Flett, 1991; Frost et al. 1990) with adaptive and maladaptive aspects.Excessive concern over mistakes, doubts about actions, parental expectations and parental criticisms are considered to be maladaptive aspects of perfectionism and are linked to greater maladjustment and psychopathology such as depression, eating disorders, anxiety and other maladaptive patterns (Flett Hewitt, 2002; Shafran Mansell, 2001; Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Luyten, Duriez, Goossens, 2005) Adaptive perfectionism has been linked to higher academic achievement, and greater use of adaptive coping (Ram, 2005) Adaptive perfectionists derive pleasure from their efforts, are more flexible with regards to goal attainment, set realistic standards and have high personal standards but, without self criticism.Perfectionism, especially when maladaptive, is seen as a pattern of faulty cognition leading to self handicapping behaviours such as procrastination (Flett, Blankstein, Hewitt, Koledin, 1992; Kearns, Forbes, Gardiner, Marshall, 2008) Procrastinators place unrealistic demands on themselves and demonstrate cognitive characteristics associated with perfectionism. Both procrastination and perfectionism are associated with excessive fear of failure (Ferrari, 1994; Flett, Hewitt, Davis, Sherry, 2004) Perfectionists engage in greater procrastination due to concern over their ability to achieve perfect results and to avoid making mistakes (Rice et al. 2012) Adaptive perfectionists engage in lesser procrastination as compared to non perfectionists. In contrast, maladaptive perfectionists report that they procrastinate more frequently than adaptive perfectionists but, less frequently than non perfectionists (Lippincott, 2010).Some of the negative psychological outcomes of perfectionism and procrastination are lowered self esteem and psychological distress (Dunkley, Blankstein, Halsall, Williams, Winkworth, 2000) Self esteem is the evaluative component of self knowledge and high and low self esteem relate to favourable and unfavourable global evaluations of self, respectively (Rosenberg, 1965) Studies have indicated a negative association between procrastination and self esteem (Solomon Rothblum, 1984).Coping behaviours help in achieving greater personal control over one's environment and in regulating emotions and guiding action towards altering a distressing situation (Folkman Lazarus, 1985)