Task aversiveness and procrastination: a multi-dimensional approach to task aversiveness across stages of personal projects

The purpose of this research was to explore notions of task aversiveness across stages of personal projects. 95 female and 66 male undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology class completed Personal Projects Analysis (PPA; Little, 1983 [Personal projects: a rationale and method for investigation. Environment and Behaviour, 15, 273–309]). Based on theories of action proposed by Little (1983) and Gollwitzer [Gollwitzer, P. M. (1990). The volitional benefits from planning. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh, The psychology of action: linking cognition and motivation to behaviour (pp. 287–312). New York: Guilford Press], respondents’ projects were sorted into four broad stages: inception, planning, action and termination. Principal components analysis (PCA) revealed that boredom, frustration and resentment emerge as PPA dimensions associated with task aversiveness at each stage of project development. Personal meaning, autonomy, structure, stress and negative emotions were also found to be related to task aversiveness, but these aspects of aversiveness varied across the stages of project development. As hypothesized, each principal component identified with task aversiveness was found to be positively related with procrastination. These findings are discussed in terms of previous research in the area of procrastination and Kuhlʹs theory of action [Kuhl, J. (1987). Action control: the maintenance of motivational states. In F. Halisch & J. Kuhl, Motivation, intention and volition (pp. 279–291). New York: Springer-Verlag.; Kuhl, J. (1994). A theory of action and state orientations. In J. Kuhl & J. Beckman, Volition and personality: action versus state orientation (pp. 9–46). Toronto: Hogrefe & Huber].