Does Abstract Thinking Cause Procrastination?
February 5th, 2009 Oliver StarrCategories | Bookshelf | Cognitive Science | Getting Things Done | Psychology of GTD
According to a number of clever studies that were discussed in the January 22nd Print Edition of the Economist it just might.
In each of three studies conducted by a team led by Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz, in Germany, researchers found that groups that were asked to perform concrete tasks and to provide specific information tended quite significantly to respond within the allotted time whereas groups that were given tasks where the answers were not as defined and which required more abstract rather than linear reasoning skills tended to respond after the proscribed time frame or to not respond at all.
While on one level these results are not suprising I think it is important not to draw too many conclusions from this sort of seriously limited study. For one thing studies such as this suffer quite significantly from the fact that the researchers have little control over many hundreds of extraneous factors that can influence the results of their research.
Further it is important to be certain that what they are seeing is truly a cause and effect relationship between the type of task each participant was asked to perform and the way in which the participant responded. How, do the researchers know, for example, that there isn’t someone within the group that is self medicating with procrastination induced fear rather then because of some abstract question they were asked to answer?
While I am reasonably sure that the conclusions of the study point towards a relationship between abstract thought and procrastination in some people I suspect that this is only a very small part of the complete picture. A lot more research in this area is needed before any valid conclusions can be drawn in my opinion - after all- it may be that procrastination is more likely to cause abstract thinking than to be caused by it; just ask anyone that knows me well. They’ll tell you…











