ICEEPSY 2016 : 7th International Conference on Education and Educational Psychology

Decisional Procrastination: The Role of Courage,

Media Multitasking and Planning Fallacy
Jeremy Kristantoa, & Juneman Abrahama*
* Corresponding author: Juneman Abraham, +62215345830 ext. 2632, juneman@binus.ac.id

a
Bina Nusantara University, Psychology Department, Jl. Kemanggisan Ilir III/45, DKI Jakarta 11480, Indonesia

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2016.11.69
Some adverse effects of procrastination are anxiety, tension, loss of valuable opportunities, as well as the
breakdown of relationships with other people. This study assumed that procrastination is learned. Procrastination
can be avoided by identifying its predictors; the question is: Are courage, media multitasking, and planning fallacy
able to predict the decisional procrastination? The purpose of this study was to test the following hypotheses: (1)
Courage can predict decisional procrastination in the negative direction; (2) Media multitasking can predict it in a
positive direction, and (3) Planning fallacy can predict it in a positive direction. Participants of this study were 192
university students in the Greater Area of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia (116 males, 76 females; mean of age =
20.77 years old; standard deviation = 3.02 years) recruited using convenience sampling technique. The research
data were obtained through questionnaires in Indonesian and analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis.
Multiple linear regression analysis showed that our model can explain the decisional procrastination, with R-
square = 6.4%. This study found that (1) The higher one’s courage, the lower his/her decisional procrastination, (2)
Media multitasking and planning fallacy cannot predict it. Since the planning fallacy is laden with cognitive
processes, courage has a dominant affective or behavioral attitudinal nuance, and media multitasking can be
viewed as a psychomotor variable; the current study concludes that the affective variable is the principal thing to
be intervened to prevent or stop the decisional procrastination.

© 2016 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.uk

Keywords: Psychology of procrastination, courage, multitasking, fallacy.

1. Introduction

Most of the time, obstacles in life are followed by a set of tasks and challenges in different contexts.
Actions taken could differ greatly, ranging from an immediate action to delaying till the last minute.
Individuals who do not immediately take action tend to delay and avoid their actions for some time
until they are in the right mood to do it. One common example of this phenomenon could be observed

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by looking at the behavior of student X. Student X was given an assignment from his lecturer that gave
him a three-week deadline. Because of the long duration, he didn’t even touch and read any of the
assignment. Then, in the next two weeks and five days, he was asked by his friends to help about their
assignment and he was panicked, because he had forgotten all about it, and thus, pulled an all-nighter to
complete the whole assignment. This phenomenon is called procrastination and was based on
interviews conducted by the author with some university students.
Stead, Shanahan, and Neufeld (2010) described procrastination as a delay of an action. Take an
example of student X’s behavior above, in which he chose to delay his assignment, and when the
deadline neared, panic struck. Perhaps this example of behavior doesn’t really describe procrastination
as a whole. In the task completion process, individuals may delay and avoid an assignment, due to their
set of priorities, or perhaps they need some sorts of break to release some stress. There are two types of
delays; some people delay to avoid the undesired outcome and some delay for no strong reason. The
positive delay is done to avoid the impulsive decision-making, and the negative delay is caused by no
apparent reason (Ferrari, as cited in in Orellana-Damacela, Tindale, & Suarez-Balcazar, 2000).
Therefore, there are two types of procrastination; functional and dysfunctional. Functional
procrastination is the delay of task completion to find more compatible and suitable information, so that
the task results can be perfect. On the other hand, dysfunctional procrastination is the delay of task
completion with no clear purpose and direction. Dysfunctional procrastination is a form of unrelated
activity, which is not relevant in the context of the work. There are two forms of dysfunctional
procrastination, which are decisional procrastination and behavioral-avoidant procrastination (Ferrari &
Emmons, 1995). Decisional procrastination is a form of cognitive thinking that delays the decision
making of an assignment in order to face stressful situations, thus reducing the pressure in the mind to
deal with other situations (Pychyl, Morin, & Salmon, 2000), while behavioral avoidant procrastination
is a continuity of decisional procrastination (Ferrari & Emmons, 1995). Decisional procrastination is a
tendency of incapability to decide in a certain time range (Janis & Mann, as cited in Fabio, 2006; Ling,
2012). Burka and Yuen (as cited in Ling, Yuwanto, & Siaputra, 2012) described it as an avoidance of
decision-making; people deliberately delay making a decision because they chose to do other priorities
that they perceive will be less stressful.
Every student has ever experienced of being given plentiful tasks and materials. There are some who
do the assignment straight away and some need to take some time to start the assignment, thus
disrupting the functionality of the assignment. This delay is called dysfunctional delay (Steel, 2007). In
this case, procrastination is an irrational delay because it opposes the requirement of an assignment,
which is to be completed immediately. Procrastinators are associated with bad labels, such as slack,
careless, ignorant, and unappreciative (Orellana-Damacela et al., 2000). However, in the end, the
student who procrastinates still does the assignment, which proves the labels otherwise. It means that
these labels cannot fully describe academic procrastinators.
According to Marano (2003), procrastination is a self-regulation problem. People with low self-
regulation tend to have problems in managing time. Other features of procrastination were described as
follows: (1) A procrastinator tends to be more optimistic in predicting the time and tends to
underestimate the time needed to finish the task. They also tend to dupe themselves, by constantly

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believing that they still have time to finish it tomorrow; (2) Procrastination is something learned and
avoidable; (3) Procrastination has a bigger impact than just a problem of not being punctual. Referring
to the case of student X above, what would have happened if the lecturer had not given out a specific
deadline, and X had forgotten to do the assignment?
Roughly, 70% of students tend to procrastinate and more than 20% procrastinate in the daily basis
(Schraw, Wadkins and Olafson, as cited in Lowinger, He, Lin & Chang, 2014). In Indonesia, Ursia,
Siaputra, and Sutanto (2013) found out that almost 57% of students procrastinate. Procrastination is
also found among academicians, ones of the most common individuals who procrastinate (Ferrari &
Emmons, 1995). The outcomes of procrastination on students are unfinished assignments, rushed and
unsatisfactory results, and high level of anxiety and guilt, and low concentration in the studying process
(Solomon & Rothblum, 1984). Negative consequences caused by procrastination include career
opportunity loss, lower interpersonal relationships, loss of clear perspective, anxiety, high stress and
depression (OvercomingProcrastination.net, 2011).
Because of the high prevalence and harmful outcomes of procrastination, there is a demand to
highlight what causes students procrastinate. In addition, seeing the difficulty of eradicating
procrastination in spite of the vast investigation out there, the author suspected that there are more
reasons underlying procrastination that needs to be known and comprehended.
Procrastination is the result of the cognitive failure; that is the form of a wrong mindset to start
and/or complete a task that has a limited time (Fabio, 2006). Such failure may result in a delay in
completing and collecting assignments, therefore impedes the learning process. The delay of an
assignment usually takes the consideration of a given deadline. People usually procrastinate because
they believe they can make it before the deadline (Orellana-Damacela et al., 2000).
This current study focuses on decisional procrastination, a cognitive deviation that causes people to
delay decisions. Individuals with high levels of this kind of procrastination tend to have conflicts in
choosing information and ways to do assignments. Therefore, avoiding these conflicts, they try to
distract themselves by focusing on less stressful activities (Pychyl et al., 2000). Although students
already knew the consequences of decisional procrastination, there were many who still did it on a daily
basis (Steel, 2010).

1.1. Procrastination and Courage

There are lots of advices and best practices describing what and how to combat procrastination. One
of the most essential explanation about procrastination was of Bayati (2015), “How to Erase
Procrastination Out of Your Life with this One Secret”. He stated, “What happens in a moment of
procrastination is unconsciously your fear takes over, and you start to focus on why it won’t work,
whether you can or can’t do the task and the possible implications of the task” (Bayati, 2015, p. 1). The
way to combat procrastination is to be courageous and to take the risk (Bergman, 2013).
This explanation and advice in combatting procrastination were also supported by Burka and Yuen
(2008), in which they mentioned that the emotional roots of procrastination involve inner feelings,
fears, hopes, memories, dreams, doubts, and pressures. However, “many procrastinators don’t
recognize all that’s going on ‘under the surface’ because they use procrastination to avoid
uncomfortable feelings” (Burka & Yuen, 2008, p. 1).

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The word ‘courage’ originates from an old French “corage”, translated as “heart and spirit”; courage
also originates from the Latin word “cor”, translated as “more at heart” (Spence & Smythe, 2007). By
this etymology, the word courage is associated with the power from the heart and strength from the
inside. The APA Dictionary (VandenBos, 2007) defines courage as the ability to face challenges up
front when the physical, psychological and moral conditions are threatened.
Courage is deemed as one of the four main virtues of human, alongside with self-control, justice,
and wisdom (Harrington & Keenan, 2010); the act in facing a stimulus that is perceived as scary, new
and unusual (Norton & Weiss, 2009). There are three main attributes of courage: (1) A willingness to
pursue driving an appropriate course of action; (2) having a noble goal or higher purpose; and (3)
Despite the risk, danger, or fear (Goud, 2005; Schwartz, 2012). High level of courage is associated with
endurance from the fear-inducing stimulus. Despite experiencing fear, courageous individual completes
the same course of action as the fearless individual; while the fearless individual does not experience
fear at all. (Rachman et al., as cited in Norton & Weiss, 2009). In other words, “Courage was not the
absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who
conquers that fear – quoting Nelson Mandela” (Greenberg, 2012, p. 1).
In conclusion, the key to combat fear that was induced by procrastination is courage. Therefore, the
author hypothesized that the higher one’s level of courage becomes, the lower the level of decisional
procrastination will be (H1).

1.2. Procrastination and Media Multitasking

The other variable that the author hypothesized that it could predict decisional procrastination is
multitasking. Dzubak (2007) defined multitasking as the engagement in individuals and discrete tasks
that are performed in succession. There is necessarily some time spent switching between tasks. “The
switching between tasks is a part of the sequential processing of information and necessitates the
selection of information that will be attended to, processed, encoded and stored” (Dzubak, 2007, p. 1).
Because of the sequential processing of information, the concentration of task will be divided and
scattered. Moreover, if addictive things such as internet, games, etc. are involved, the attention span
will focus on enjoyable things other than the task at hand (Burka & Yuen, 2008). These findings are
also supported by Hembrooke and Gay’s (2003) research results discovering a limited processing
channel in the brain; therefore, the results of information from multitasking are usually capped and not
optimized. Ellis, Daniels, and Jauregui (2010) also found the limited processing in the brain sensory,
which may cause attention to be easily distracted. Therefore task completion will be delayed.
Combining those insights, multitasking and procrastination have similarities in the limited processing
resulting in dysfunctional delays. Therefore, the author hypothesized that multitasking can predict the
decisional procrastination in a positive way (H2).

1.3. Procrastination and Planning Fallacy

Planning fallacy refers to ”the conviction that a current project will go as planned even though most
projects from a relevant comparison set have failed to fulfill their planned outcomes” (Buehler, Griffin,
& Peetz, 2010, p. 2). Planning fallacy was first introduced by Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky (1982)
describing people’s proneness “to underestimate the time required to complete a project, even when

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they have considerable experience of past failures to live up to planned schedules” (p. 415). Planning
fallacy happens as soon as the individual ignores his/her past experience and performance and adopts
his/her internal perspective, i.e. maintaining their optimism about the current project in the face of
historical evidence to the contrary (Buehler et al., 2010; Pychyl et al., 2000).
Planning fallacy is caused by an individual’s cognitive state of mind to underestimate the completion
and planning, delaying the task by doing other insignificant task (Brunnermeier, Papakonstantinou. &
Parker, 2008). These definitions and implications have compatibilities with procrastination. Therefore,
the author hypothesized that planning fallacy can predict decisional procrastination in a positive
direction (H3).
The overall hypothetical model is described in Fig. 1.

2. Methods

2.1. Participants and Design

In this study, the characteristics of participants are (1) Active university students; (2) Aged between
16 and 27 years old; and (3) Attending campus in Greater Jakarta Region. The sampling technique was
non-probability sampling, i.e. convenience sampling.
The study used predictive-correlational design, with Courage, Media Multitasking and Planning
fallacy as the predictors (independent variables); and Decisional procrastination as the criterion
(dependent variable).

Courage H1 (-)
H2 (+) Decisional
Media Multitasking Procrastination
H3 (+)

Planning Fallacy

Note: (+) Positive prediction

(-) Negative prediction

Fig. 1. The hypothetical model.

2.2. Measurement and Procedure

The scale measuring the perceived courage was adapted into Indonesian from the scale of Norton
and Weiss (2009). Examples of items are: (1) If the thought of something makes me feel anxious, I will
usually avoid it (unfavorable item, reversely scored); (2) Other people describe me as courageous; and
(3) If there is an important reason to face something that scares me, I will face it anyway. The response
options range from Strongly Disagree (score 1) to Strongly Agree (score 6). From the reliability test of
Courage measurement, the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient found for courage was 0.825 (Alpha
coefficient > 0.600). There was a discarded item (number 12) because it failed to meet the item validity

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standards (CIT; corrected item-total correlations value was below 0.250). After being discarded, the
Alpha coefficient showed an increase from 0.789 to 0.825. The CIT ranged from 0.260 to 0.790.
Therefore, the final courage scale (11 items) can be used to measure courage. The total score is used
for further calculation.
For measuring multitasking behavior, the author adapted it from the Media Multitasking Inventory
(MMI) questionnaire of Ophir, Nass, and Wagner (2009) developed by Cardoso-Leite et al. (2016) into
Indonesian. This measurement gathers responses of self-report and frequencies of simultaneous
activities using a variety of media. Examples are: (1) Please report the total number of hours per week
you spend using each of the following media: Print media ___; computer-based video ___; instant
messaging ___; (2) For each type of media, please indicate how often you simultaneously engage with
each of the other types of media. The response items are: “Never” (score 0), “A little of the time” (score
1), “Some of the time” (score 2), and “Most of the time” (score 3) (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Media Multitasking Inventory sample form (Cardoso-Leite et al., 2016).

Note.boldedwords = added or modified by the author

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The characteristic of the measurement is factual (not latent variable). The MMI scoring procedure
follows the formula as shown in Fig. 3 (Ophir et al., 2009; Cardoso-Leite et al., 2016).

Fig. 3. MMI formula resulting an index.

Note. “mi is the number of media typically used while using primary medium i, hi is the number of hours per [day] reportedly
spent using primary medium i, and htotal is the total number of hours per [day] spent with all primary media”
(Ophir et al., 2009, p. 15586).

For measuring planning fallacy, the author constructed the scale based on conceptual
comprehension from previous studies (Buehler et al., 2010; Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1994; Koole &
van’t Spijker, 2000; Pezzo, Pezzo, & Stone, 2006; Pychyl et al., 2000). Among others, the dimensions
are optimism, imposing a deadline, ignorance of the past mistakes (of similar tasks), confidence in
resources, and self-representation. All of the previous research of planning fallacy uses the experiment
to gather the data. However, the author tried to capture the planning fallacy using a scale. In the scale,
the author gave an introduction to participants, “Courage is defined as one’s persistence in facing a
thing, even though he/she has fear. It takes courage to be able to engage and persist in frightening
activities.” Examples of items are: (1) Nothing could hamper my planning; (2) My planning is never
wrong; (3) I want to prove to people that I am able to finish the work in critical times; and (4) I will not
be careless in carrying out my commitment to complete the task as shown in the past experiences. The
response options ranged from Strongly Disagree (score 1) to Strongly Agree (score 6). To get the
reliability and item validity maximum index of the Planning fallacy scale, the author discarded items
numbered 2, 8, and 24. The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient increased from 0.877 to 0.895, and no single
item has the CIT below 0.254 (CIT ranged from 0.274 to 0.746). Therefore, the planning fallacy scale
(of 21 items) is reliable and valid. The total score is used for further calculation.
For measuring decisional procrastination, this study used the Decisional Procrastination
Questionnaire (DPQ) that was adapted and translated by Ling et al. (2012) in Indonesian based on
Mann’s study (as cited in Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995). The introduction of this scale is as
follows, “People differ in how they go about making decisions. Please indicate how you make
decisions by selecting the response from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 6 (Strongly Agree) to each question
that best fits your personal style.” The measurement uses a 6-point Likert scale to record the responses
from the participants. Examples of items are: (1) I waste a lot of time on trivial matters before getting
to the final decision; (2) Even after I make a decision I delay acting upon it; and (3) I don’t make
decisions unless I really have to. There weren’t any discarded items, because all of the items met the
requirement of item validity, as seen by the lower CIT value ranged from 0.559 to 0.749 and internal
consistency reliability index of Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.840. Therefore, the decisional procrastination
scale (5 items) is reliable and valid. The total score is used for further calculation.

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The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis to predict the decisional
procrastination.

3. Results

3.1. Description of the Demography

The participants consists of 76 males and 116 females (Mage = 20.77 years old; SDage = 3.02 years).
There were 116 participants from the 1st to the 4th semester, 70 people were from the 5th to the 8th
semester, and 6 people were in the 8th semester and beyond. Most of the respondents (70) were
Psychology students, followed by 24 students majoring in Accounting, and the rest (98) majoring in the
Business, English, Communication Visual Design, Economics, Law, Medicine, Marketing, Information
System, Informatics, and Industrial Engineering studies.

3.2. Regression Assumption Test

Regression assumption is satisfactorily fulfilled, indicated by: (1) Data distribution is normal (Fig.
4); (2) The data is free from heteroscedasticity (Fig. 5); and (3) Multicollinearity does not occur. All
the tolerance values for Courage, Planning fallacy and Media multitasking are greater than 0.10.
Meanwhile, the VIF values of Courage, Planning fallacy, and Media multitasking are less than 10
(Table 1).

Fig. 4. Normality test result. Fig. 5. Heteroscedasticity test result.

Table 1. Multiple linear regression analysis predicting Decisional Procrastination (n = 192).

Predictor B SE B Β p Tolerance VIF
Courage -0.222 0.064 -0.274 0.001 0.805 1.242
Planning fallacy 0.045 0.031 0.116 0.145 0.792 1.263
Media -0.069 0.099 -0.050 0.486 0.967 1.034
multitasking

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3.3. Regression Result

Courage, Planning fallacy and media multitasking can predict decisional procrastination with F (3,
191) = 4.321, p = 0.006, p < 0.01, R2 = 0.064 or 6.4%.
The analysis for multiple regression (Table 1) showed that Courage can predict the decisional
procrastination (β = -0.274, p < 0.01). H1 was supported by empirical data. However, Planning fallacy
(β = 0.116, p > 0.05) and Media multitasking (β = -0.050, p > 0.05) cannot predict it. H2 and H3 were
not supported by empirical data.

4. Discussion

Courage can predict decisional procrastination. Prior to this current study, to our knowledge, no
research has empirically confirmed the predictive power of courage toward procrastination. This study
found that the higher the courage, the lower the decisional procrastination. Goud (2005) stated that
courage (1) is the fundamental motivational power of self-growth or self-realization, (2) allows one to
generate effective action even though faced with negativities such as risks, dangers, and fears, (3)
allows, quoting Aristotle (as cited in Goud, 2005), people to have “appropriate fear and action” against
fearful objects at the right time. The characteristics of courage are very incompatible with
procrastination. For example, Ferrari, Johnson, and McCown (as cited in Ling, 2012) in the conflict
paradigm of decision making, showed that the decisional procrastinator is a maladaptive coping actor
in a dilemma situation. In fact, by definition, a courageous person is an effective coping actor as well,
at the proper moment. Following the paradigm of Temporal Motivation Theory, Steel (as cited in Ling,
2012) stated that people who procrastinate in decision making has low self-efficacy and achievement
needs, and they tend to get bored easily to dutiful situations. In the meantime, in the context of the
paradigm of growth (Goud, 2005), courageous people precisely (1) have confidence, perseverance,
control, and persistence to take on responsibilities and meet the expectations directed for their
development, (2) love to walk in a new and uncertain situation, and (3) do not easily take the reaction
of “flight” against most of aversive situations.
In addition, impulsiveness is the greatest representation of sensitivity to delay dimension of
procrastination (Ling, 2012; Steel, 2007). People who could suddenly act on something thought or
desired are likely to have a low sensitivity. When connected to one of the dimensions of courage that is
“appropriate action”, it is clear that procrastination violates this. Aristotle (as cited in Goud, 2005)
explained that courageous people do not have the quality of “foolhardy”, i.e. acting impulsively and
taking unnecessary risk. Courageous people will even decide for not taking an action if there are
certain impulses which press them to do unethical things. In this case, “no action” is an action too.
Conversely, a procrastinator in the sense of urgency may choose forced or brutal or blind bravery
without sufficient mental shrewdness, and does not care about the impact of his/her actions, because
he/she lacks of good assessment of faced fear and danger.
Another pivotal dimension of decisional procrastination is the high intention-action gap (Ling, 2012;
Steel, 2007). Ling (2012, p. 17) explained, “Someone will tend to delay a task that does not give direct
rewards of both prizes and punishments.” This dimension is also an opposition of courage, because
courage bases itself on the conscience, and not merely anticipates reward or pain (Klausner, 1961).

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Intention-action gap in courageous people is low. Klauesner mentioned, in the conflicted-values

situation that raises existential anxieties, a courageous person has a “motivational resources or internal
systems motive” to act in handling the anxiety even though he/she knew that the resulting actions
might be imperfect. For courageous people, anxiety is recognized, accepted, and faced. It is not
“distorted” by using a psychological defense mechanism. In addition, “Courage implies a conscious
decision, an act of will” (Klausner, 1961, p. 67). This statement implies that courage is not only being
cautious (not reacting impulsively), but also having had the results of intentions and already undergone
lots of considerations. This intention provides the significant energy to “reach” action. These things
explain the reason why the higher the courage a person has, the lower his/her decisional procrastination
will be.
Therefore, to prevent procrastination, one needs to instill courageous mindset inherent in him/her, so
that he/she can apply the mindset in any culture and work field. A number of ways could be taken as
indicated by Gruber (2011). First, one needs to repetitively reflect that “Courage is self-affirmation ‘in-
spite-of’, that is in spite of that which tends to prevent the self from affirming itself” (Tillich, as cited
in Gruber, 2011, p. 274). Second, to enhance the courage, in the perspective of
Existential/Phenomenological of Rollo May (as cited in Gruber, 2011, p. 275), one needs training for
flourishing autonomous thoughts, creativity, and independence. It was no surprise that these three
things – not only positively correlated with courage − but also facilitate the efficient and effective
decision-making process. Third, courage can also be enhanced by boldly held freedom to choose
his/her own life spaces that are capable of stimulating, challenging, and sustaining his/her courage.
Fourth, Maddi (2004) suggested that we should constantly be questioning the meaning of our lives −
rather than getting busy in satisfying our biological needs (entering a “comfort zone”), because by
being on the “status quo”, there will be no emerged existential anxiety as the necessary condition of
courage. By having the courage, we actually have a future time perspective in decision-making, and it
is not compatible with procrastination. Fifth, establishing trusting connections are also needed in
developing courage (Brendtro, Brokenleg, & Van Bockern, 2005). These five methods to improve
courage can be applied to construct procrastination prevention training modules. It is also advised for
teachers and lecturers not to give assignments in intimidating ways. All those descriptions show key
words that have affective nuance contents. Klausner actually stated that the equivalent of “courage” in
terms of Tillich’s terminology is “faith”, and courageous faith as an “existential confidence” discussed
in this current study is classified as “the ‘purely affective’ model” (Bishop, 2016).
Contrary to the hypothesis, planning fallacy is not able to predict decisional procrastination. While
planning fallacy has the potential to lead to procrastination (Brunnermeier et al., 2008), it also has
another direction of influence. This is in line with the statement (Buehler & Griffin, 2003, p. 88), “The
planning fallacy cannot be attributed simply to a subset of individuals who tend to delay working at
their tasks.” Buehler (2007, p. 2) stated that a person who makes planning fallacy can also have “strong
desires to finish tasks early”. In this case, they do have high initiation. They do not delay to start
working on a task. However, they are too focused on the internal characteristics of the task and do not
consider factors beyond the task itself. They are less aware of or less tolerant to that “events don’t
usually unfold exactly as planned” (Buehler, 2007, p. 2). Hence, planning fallacy has two possible

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ways of influence on the decisional procrastination, i.e. positively and negatively. Therefore, the scores
reduce each other so as to produce “zero-summed” or no correlation.
Media multitasking could not predict decisional procrastination either. Galluch and Thatcher (2006)
found that multitasking is associated with cyberloafing (i.e. reduction of efforts in working on the main
task, and enhanced activities of non-relevant tasks, in which non-relevant task is done through the
medium of the internet), in particular, through the mediation of cognitive absorption variable.
Association between multitasking and cyberloafing is described by Rajah and Lim (2011, p. 3) as
follows:
“Yet, when employees cyberloaf at work, such as having other non-work related websites open in
other browsers, they are essentially juggling multiple mental tasks at the same time .... [I]ndividuals
who engaged in multi-tasking performed worse in the tasks assigned.”
Those findings connote that the internet multitasking (and the associated cyberloafing) contains the
psychological processes that are detrimental to productivity. Cyberloafing in this study can be
considered as the direct-impacted psychological processes of media multitasking; with the presence of
today’s smartphones. The majority of media mentioned in Cardoso-Leite et al.’s (2016) study, which
become the measurement instrument in this study, are now connected to the internet. If it is related to
decisional procrastination, the media multitasking can provoke the procrastination. This is because
distractability is something quite peculiar to a procrastinator; i.e. a person is easily distracted by other
things that are assumed to be more fun than the main task he is working on (Ling, 2012), and media
multitasking has an association with the distractibility (Moisala et al., 2016). However, Handoyo
(2016) through his meta-synthesis found that cyberloafing does not only have negative impacts.
Cyberloafing also proved to have a positive impact of reducing boredom (because of the potential for
informative and recreational activities) and encouraging creativity, and also build confidence on
interrelatedness among networks (Handoyo, 2016). As stated above, creativity and trusting connections
are “ingredients” to impede or even halt decisional procrastination. Media multitasking also offers
employees a break, allowing them to “zone out” and to shift their attention from work demands (Lim &
Chen, 2009). Similar to planning fallacy, of which there is an ambiguity of the ways media
multitasking influence on decisional procrastination, either negatively or positively, it is not surprising
that no predictive correlation was found between the two.

5. Conclusion

This study concludes that the affective variable (courage) is the main variable to predict the
decisional procrastination. Howver, the cognitive (planning fallacy) and the psychomotor (media
multitasking) variables cannot predict it.

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