Questions in Behavioural Economics -  Students and Procrastination

Rob Hayer finally gets in his answer on procrastination! His brief was to write on “Why do students find it difficult to complete assignments on time?”

I’ll just spend another 20 minutes on the X box. I’ll just play football for 15 minutes more. I have plenty of time to do my assignment later, if I just move this here and spend two minutes less there.

Time management is a difficult skill. Often, in a students head, they make themselves think they will have enough time to finish a piece of work on time. This allows them to continue with their daily life, until the troubles come. This short term attitude, classical economists would argue, is irrational and not how typical ‘Econs’ would behave as it isn’t in their long term interests. However humans are emotional and affected irrationally by distractions. Playing the X box may be fun for me, but it is not beneficial in the long run (if overplayed). As Dan Ariely says about cheating, it is about qualifying doing something you know is wrong in your mind so you can still look yourself in the mirror, with the same morals. The qualifying could be as dignified as that now will hand in a much better piece of work if I do it tomorrow or as trivial as my teacher cant kill me so I will be fine! I was to not to my assignment at all, I know that would be wrong, but just one day, hey, that is fine.

Perhaps there is something in the idea that humans like a thrill, even sub consciously. To leave work to the last minute can be in a weird way exciting. Also then one knows that they have to complete it in one solid go. Reality being reality, students often fail with this, and so assignments are late.

Students in general often find it hard to motivate themselves. A major reason for a student not to hand his work in on time is the risk associated. It seems it is necessary for someone to push them or warn them of punishment, for a student to make sure he/she completes the work in time. I know for my two maths teachers, I never hand in the work late to the teacher that will give detention. In this way, the theory of the perils of obedience becomes relevant. A student that is not at risk of getting in trouble will give in work late more often than that of a student facing detention. An economist could say students are behaving rationally in the short term. This is because we want to avoid punishment, so we do work when that becomes a danger. Of course there are other motivations, such as good will and the hunger for a good job to provide, but they are often weaker when it seems to not matter if work is late.

Overall, it seems students will hand in work late because they qualify it as acceptable behaviour in their minds and plan to make it up in some other way, or they are not at risk of punishment. An obvious statement but that could be missed is also that students often have a lot going on in their life and sometimes assignments are placed at a lower priority. Whether its chasing girls, trying to pass their driving test or simply playing a lot of sport.