Procrastination is a prominent issue in the student population. Procrastination seems to differ between men and women and had multiple causes, but is most often associated with stress. The current...Show moreProcrastination is a prominent issue in the student population. Procrastination seems to differ between men and women and had multiple causes, but is most often associated with stress. The current study had two aims; 1) examine the effect of the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy based GetStarted programme as intervention for procrastination symptoms, 2) explore the possibility of stress symptoms as a mediator in the relation between sex and procrastination symptoms. For the first aim a pretest-posttest design was used, and for the mediation a cross-sectional study design was used. A total of 424 students (313 women, 111 men) from different universities in the Netherlands participated in the study. The measures in the current study consisted of the Irrational Procrastination Scale (IPS) and the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10). This study made use of paired sample t-tests in IBM SPSS and mediation analysis using the PROCESS macro. The results showed a significant decrease in procrastination symptoms between T0 and T1; t(207) = 9.40, p < .01 and between T1 and T2; t(97) = 4.65, p < .01. The mediation analysis showed a significant indirect effect of stress symptoms on the relation between sex and procrastination symptoms (b = -0.58, boot SE = 0.25, CI [-1.08, -1.02]). The findings indicated that GetStarted is an effective intervention for decreasing procrastination symptoms in students. It was also shown that stress has a mediating effect on the relationship between sex and procrastination symptoms. When looking at the limitations of the study, future research is needed to make solid proclamations.Show less
Inertia as a concept in the natural sciences has been used since Newtonian times. However, the social science literature still struggles in defining inertia and its many variations. In current...Show moreInertia as a concept in the natural sciences has been used since Newtonian times. However, the social science literature still struggles in defining inertia and its many variations. In current social science literature, numerous definitions exist that define inertia differently; consequently, not much is known about inertia (Bozzo, 2002). Furthermore, inertia is often confounded with related phenomena, such as procrastination and status-quo bias (Cui et al., 2020). This ultimately hinders the effective study of inertia, as the quality of a theory or research is only as good as the quality of the definition that is used for the studied phenomenon (Rozin, 2009). The current study adds to the inertia literature by utilizing a prototype approach in defining “financial inertia”. For the purposes of this study “financial inertia” is viewed as inertia in a financial setting. Compared to classical definitions, a prototype definition is more encompassing and is not hindered by absolutes. Through a prototype analysis, we asked laymen in the United States of America and United Kingdom about their thoughts, views, and feelings regarding financial decision making. Afterwards, using this data we identified a list of features related to financial decision making (Study 1) and used these features to calculate their centrality in relation to financial inertia (Study 2). Centrality refers to the relatedness of these features to financial inertia and was used to divide the features into central features (more related) and peripheral features (related to a lesser extent). Using the gathered data, this paper proposes a working definition of financial inertia in the hopes of clarifying inertia literature and aiding the creation of an instrument that measures financial inertia. As we assume that all that applies to “financial inertia” reciprocally 4 applies to inertia itself, the current findings will contribute to future research on this topic as well.Show less
