Procrastination and the Priority of Short‐Term Mood Regulation: Consequences for Future Self

Abstract Procrastination is a common and pervasive problem associated with a range of negative outcomes across a variety of life domains that often occurs when people are faced with tasks that are seen as aversive. In this paper, we argue that as a form of self‐regulation failure, procrastination has a great deal to do with short‐term mood repair and emotion regulation. Moreover, we contend that a temporal understanding of self and the mood‐regulating processes involved in goal pursuit is particularly important in understanding procrastination, because the consequences of procrastination are typically borne by the future self. After summarizing the research on the priority of short‐term mood regulation in…