The Mediating Role of Procrastination and Perceived School Belongingness on Academic Performance in First Term Freshmen

The results of a structural equation model showed that a tendency to procrastinate assessed early in college students’ first term was positively related to concerns over social exclusion, but was negatively related to academic task values and grade goal-setting. In addition, the tendency to procrastinate had a direct negative relationship with self-regulatory self-efficacy and perceived school belongingness, and was positively related to perceived stress near the end of the term. There was also a negative total effect of procrastination on end-of-term grade point average (GPA). While no significant relationship was found between procrastination and performance or mastery achievement goal orientations, a performance-approach orientation was positively related to GPA. The relationship between mastery-approach orientation and GPA was not significant. Goals, Values and Self-regulation Goals have been conceptualized as internal representations of desires that exist in a hierarchical network (e.g., Austin & Vancouver, 1996; Carver & Scheier, 1998; DeShone & Gillespie, 2005). In this vein, DeShone & Gillespie (2005) have outlined a hierarchical taxonomy that, in addition to agency and esteem, places affiliation as a high-level goal supported by lower level achievement goals. Furthermore, Carver and Scheier (1998) have proposed that goals with a higher degree of complexity or connectedness to other goals or those higher up in the hierarchy are hypothesized to be more important or valued relative to less connected or lower level goals. This implies that the value of achievement goals and the choices they influence are determined to some extent by affiliation goals. To the extent that self-regulated performance reflects values through the choices students make (Tuckman, 1990) and, in turn, influences important outcomes such as self-efficacy (Sirois, 2004), stress (Tice & Baumeister, 1997), and school belongingness (Anderman & Freeman, Paper Given at AERA Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, 2010 2 2004) an important issue is the nature of the mediating self-regulatory influence in the relationships between social and academic values and these outcomes. In the present study, it is hypothesized that the need for belongingness, defined as “a need to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of interpersonal relationships” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995, p. 499), can motivate behavior in order to gain social acceptance (Baumeister & DeWall, 2005), and may conflict or be congruent with academic self-regulatory behaviors. On the one hand, in situations where academic and social values conflict, a potential arises for a lack of academic self-regulation manifested as a tendency to procrastinate (Tuckman, 1991). This may account for the finding that self-presentational concerns may be a mechanism underlying self-defeating strategies in general (Tice & Baumeister, 1990) and may be one reason that van Eerde’s (2003) meta-analysis of research on procrastination showed that receiving negative performance feedback was not as important a factor in procrastination as one’s self-image. In addition, research has shown that an important aspect of academic procrastination involves conflicts between studying and social concerns such as socializing or leisure activities (Dietz, Hofer & Fries, 2007; Schouwenburg & Groenewoud, 2001; Hofer, Schmid, Fries, Dietz, Clausen, & Reinders, 2007; Senecal, Julien, and Guay (2003). Thus, when the need for belongingness is thwarted and affiliation goals cannot be sufficiently achieved, perceptions and concerns over the potential of social exclusion can disrupt persistence, cognition, and selfregulation (Baumeister & DeWall, 2005; Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Twenge, 2005; Baumeister, Twenge, & Nuss, 2002). On the other hand, when affiliation goals in educational achievement contexts are congruent with academic achievement goals, an important convergence can take place such that self-regulated choices reflect those of the educational contexts (Urdan & Maehr, 1995). For example, DeWall, Baumeister, and Vohs (2008) showed that participants, led to believe that they should expect a future of poor social relationships and loneliness, performed Paper Given at AERA Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, 2010 3 better than participants led to believe that they should expect a future of good social relationships when tasks were framed as diagnostic of traits desirable for good social relationships. This implies that an active need for belongingness can engender a search for contexts that support affiliation goals and may be problematic only if contexts are antithetical to academic achievement (Dishion, Spracklen, Andrews, & Patterson, 1996; Finn, 1989; Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Fries & Dietz, 2007; Hofer, et al., 2007; Hymel, Comfort, Schonert-Reichl, & Mcdougall, 1996; Juvonen, 2006; Mounts & Steinberg, 1995; Osterman, 2000). Thus, behaviors associated with non-social tasks that are unpleasant in some way (e.g., boring, arduous, tedious, etc.), may not be self-regulated in a way that is productive if belongingness needs are active and the tasks are not perceived as socially relevant or meaningful. Given limitations of executive processing, a choice to self-regulate in one domain implies less willingness to self-regulate in another domain (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Baumeister & Heatherington, 1996; Baumeister, Muraven, &Tice, 2000; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). Students’ tendency to procrastinate, as a trait (Schouwenburg, 2004), may be one of the long-term consequences of socially irrelevant academic tasks. However, high attainment, intrinsic, and/or utility values (Eccles, 2005) associated with academic tasks should be negatively related to procrastination due either to a convergence with social values (Urdan & Maehr, 1995) or perhaps independently of them. Regardless, academic values are known to be positively related to study management and effort (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, and McKeachie, 1993) and thus should be negatively related to the tendency to