IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_11072.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Motivated Procrastination

Author

Listed:
  • Charlotte Cordes
  • Jana Friedrichsen
  • Simeon Schudy

Abstract

Procrastination is often attributed to time-inconsistent preferences but may also arise when individuals derive anticipatory utility from holding optimistic beliefs about their future effort costs. This study provides a rigorous empirical test for this notion of ‘motivated procrastination’. In a longitudinal experiment over four weeks, individuals must complete a cumbersome task of unknown length. We find that exogenous variation in scope for motivated reasoning results in optimistic beliefs among workers, which causally increase the deferral of work to the future. The roots for biased beliefs stem from motivated memory, such that procrastination may persist even if uncertainty is eventually resolved.

Suggested Citation

  • Charlotte Cordes & Jana Friedrichsen & Simeon Schudy, 2024. "Motivated Procrastination," CESifo Working Paper Series 11072, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11072
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11072.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ned Augenblick & Eben Lazarus & Michael Thaler, 2021. "Overinference from Weak Signals and Underinference from Strong Signals," Papers 2109.09871, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2023.
    2. Yves Le Yaouanq & Peter Schwardmann, 2022. "Learning About One’s Self," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(5), pages 1791-1828.
    3. Richard H. Thaler & Shlomo Benartzi, 2004. "Save More Tomorrow (TM): Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages 164-187, February.
    4. Markus M. Möbius & Muriel Niederle & Paul Niehaus & Tanya S. Rosenblat, 2022. "Managing Self-Confidence: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 7793-7817, November.
    5. Armin Falk & Anke Becker & Thomas Dohmen & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2023. "The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 1935-1950, April.
    6. Matthew Rabin & Ted O'Donoghue, 1999. "Doing It Now or Later," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 103-124, March.
    7. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Filippos Papakonstantinou & Jonathan A. Parker, 2017. "Optimal Time-Inconsistent Beliefs: Misplanning, Procrastination, and Commitment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1318-1340, May.
    8. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    9. Christoph Drobner, 2022. "Motivated Beliefs and Anticipation of Uncertainty Resolution," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 89-105, March.
    10. Soo Hong Chew & Wei Huang & Xiaojian Zhao, 2020. "Motivated False Memory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(10), pages 3913-3939.
    11. Florian Zimmermann, 2020. "The Dynamics of Motivated Beliefs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(2), pages 337-361, February.
    12. Alexander Coutts, 2019. "Good news and bad news are still news: experimental evidence on belief updating," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(2), pages 369-395, June.
    13. Ned Augenblick & Muriel Niederle & Charles Sprenger, 2015. "Editor's Choice Working over Time: Dynamic Inconsistency in Real Effort Tasks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(3), pages 1067-1115.
    14. Tanjim Hossain & Ryo Okui, 2013. "The Binarized Scoring Rule," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(3), pages 984-1001.
    15. Armin Falk & Florian Zimmermann, 2018. "Information Processing and Commitment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(613), pages 1983-2002, August.
    16. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2016. "Mindful Economics: The Production, Consumption, and Value of Beliefs," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 141-164, Summer.
    17. Ned Augenblick & Matthew Rabin, 2019. "An Experiment on Time Preference and Misprediction in Unpleasant Tasks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(3), pages 941-975.
    18. Keith Marzilli Ericson, 2017. "On the Interaction of Memory and Procrastination: Implications for Reminders, Deadlines, and Empirical Estimation," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 692-719.
    19. David Danz & Lise Vesterlund & Alistair J. Wilson, 2022. "Belief Elicitation and Behavioral Incentive Compatibility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(9), pages 2851-2883, September.
    20. Akerlof, George A, 1991. "Procrastination and Obedience," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 1-19, May.
    21. Steffen Altmann & Christian Traxler & Philipp Weinschenk, 2022. "Deadlines and Memory Limitations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6733-6750, September.
    22. Christoph Drobner & Sebastian J. Goerg, 2021. "Motivated Belief Updating and Rationalization of Information," Munich Papers in Political Economy 18, Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich.
    23. Stefano DellaVigna & Ulrike Malmendier, 2006. "Paying Not to Go to the Gym," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 694-719, June.
    24. Emily H. Ho & David Hagmann & George Loewenstein, 2021. "Measuring Information Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(1), pages 126-145, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Castagnetti, Alessandro & Schmacker, Renke, 2022. "Protecting the ego: Motivated information selection and updating," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    2. Pleshcheva, Vlada & Klapper, Daniel & Dannewald, Till, 2019. "On Factors of Consumer Heterogeneity in (Mis)Valuation of Future Energy Costs: Evidence for the German Automobile Market," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 140, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    3. Bolte, Lukas & Fan, Tony Q., 2024. "Motivated mislearning: The case of correlation neglect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 647-663.
    4. Yves Le Yaouanq & Peter Schwardmann, 2022. "Learning About One’s Self," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(5), pages 1791-1828.
    5. Bisin, Alberto & Hyndman, Kyle, 2020. "Present-bias, procrastination and deadlines in a field experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 339-357.
    6. Anett John, 2020. "When Commitment Fails: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(2), pages 503-529, February.
    7. Kai Barron, 2021. "Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 31-58, March.
    8. Gergely Hajdu, 2024. "Excusing Beliefs about Third-party Success," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp362, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    9. Nicholas G. Hall & Zhixin Liu, 2023. "Scheduling with present bias," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(6), pages 1743-1759, June.
    10. Raphael Brade & Oliver Himmler & Robert Jaeckle & Philipp Weinschenk, 2024. "Helping Students to Succeed – The Long-Term Effects of Soft Commitments and Reminders," CESifo Working Paper Series 11001, CESifo.
    11. Hajdu, Gergely, 2024. "Excusing Beliefs about Third-party Success," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 362, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    12. Batmanov, Alisher & Grigoryeva, Idaliya, 2023. "Motivated Beliefs & Anticipation of Uncertainty Resolution: A Note," I4R Discussion Paper Series 65, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    13. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    14. Friedman, Willa & Wilson, Nicholas, 2022. "Can nudging overcome procrastinating on preventive health investments?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    15. Zachary Breig & Matthew Gibson & Jeffrey Shrader, 2019. "Why Do We Procrastinate? Present Bias and Optimism," Department of Economics Working Papers 2019-15, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    16. Ahrens, Steffen & Bosch-Rosa, Ciril, 2023. "Motivated beliefs, social preferences, and limited liability in financial decision-Making," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    17. Paul Heidhues & Philipp Strack, 2021. "Identifying Present Bias from the Timing of Choices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(8), pages 2594-2622, August.
    18. Woerner, Andrej, 2023. "Overcoming Time Inconsistency with a Matched Bet: Theory and Evidence from Exercising," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277711, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Tang, Rui & Zhang, Mu, 2023. "Motivated naivete," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    20. Hajdu, Gergely & Frollová, Nikola, 2024. "Overconfidence Due to a Self-reliance Dilemma," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 363, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    anticipatory utility; beliefs; memory; motivated cognition; procrastination; real effort; task allocation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11072. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.