Social mobility refers to individuals’ movement through a social hierarchy. We examine the effect of perceived low social mobility on passive procrastination among a specific group—students. Across five studies (N = 1,042) using a mixed-method approach, including a three-wave longitudinal survey (Study 1), a cross-sectional survey (Study 2), and three fully controlled experiments (Studies 3A, 3B, and 4), we consistently found that students perceiving low social mobility exhibit a greater tendency to procrastinate passively. Notably, perceiving low social mobility was only causally related to passive, not active, procrastination (Study 4). Our findings add to the literature on both social mobility perceptions and procrastination, and identify a new approach to understanding passive procrastination among students.
AdlerN.EpelE.CastellazzoG.IckovicsJ. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: Preliminary data in healthy, white women. Health Psychology, 9(6), 586–592. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.19.6.586
2.
AlesinaA.StantchevaS.TesoE. (2018). Intergenerational mobility and preferences for redistribution. American Economic Review, 108, 521–554. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20162015
3.
BenabouR.OkE. A. (2001). Social mobility and the demand for redistribution: The POUM hypothesis. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116, 447–487. https://doi.org/10.1162/00335530151144078
4.
BrowmanA. S.DestinM.CarswellK. L.SvobodaR. C. (2017). Perceptions of socioeconomic mobility influence academic persistence among low socioeconomic status students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 45–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.03.006
5.
BrüggemannP.RajguruK. (2022). Comprehensive meta-analysis (CMA) 3.0: A software review. Journal of Marketing Analytics, 10(4), 425–429. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41270-022-00184-5
6.
BullockH. E.LimbertW. M. (2003). Scaling the socioeconomic ladder: Low-income women’s perceptions of class status and opportunity. Journal of Social Issues, 59, 693–709. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0022-4537.2003.00085.x
7.
ChoiJ. N.MoranS. V. (2009). Why not procrastinate? Development and validation of a new active procrastination scale. Journal of Social Psychology, 149(2), 195–211. https://doi.org/10.3200/socp.149.2.195-212
8.
ChowdhuryS. F.PychylT. A. (2018). A critique of the construct validity of active procrastination. Personality and Individual Differences, 120, 7–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.016
9.
ChuA. H. C.ChoiJ. N. (2005). Rethinking procrastination: Positive effects of “active” procrastination behavior on attitudes and performance. The Journal of Social Psychology, 145(3), 245–264. https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.145.3.245-264
10.
DayM. V.FiskeS. T. (2019). Understanding the nature and consequences of social mobility beliefs. The Social Psychology of Inequality, 365–380. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28856-3_23
11.
GugushviliA.ZelinskaO.PrägP.BulczakG. (2022). Does perceived social mobility affect health? Evidence from a fixed effects approach. Social Science & Medicine, 294, Article 114705. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114705
12.
HenM.GoroshitM. (2018). General and life-domain procrastination in highly educated adults in Israel. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 1173. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01173
13.
KelleyS. M. C.KelleyC. G. E. (2009). Subjective social mobility: Data from 30 nations. In HallerM.JowellR.SmithT. W. (Eds.), Charting the globe: The international social survey programme (pp. 1984–2009). Routledge.
14.
KimK. R.SeoE. H. (2015). The relationship between procrastination and academic performance: A meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 82, 26–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.02.038
15.
KimS.FernandezS.TerrierL. (2017). Procrastination, personality traits, and academic performance: When active and passive procrastination tell a different story. Personality and Individual Differences, 108, 154–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.12.021
LayC. H. (1988). The relationship of procrastination and optimism to judgments of time to complete an essay and anticipation of setbacks. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 3(3), 201–214.
19.
LeungA. K. Y.KohB. (2019). Understanding pro-environmental intentions by integrating insights from social mobility, cosmopolitanism, and social dominance. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 22(2), 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12348
20.
LinL.HuaL.LiJ. (2022). Seeking pleasure or growth? The mediating role of happiness motives in the longitudinal relationship between social mobility beliefs and well-being in college students. Personality and Individual Differences, 184, Article 111170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111170
21.
Matamoros-LimaJ.GaldiS.MoyaM.WillisJ. B. (2024). Social mobility beliefs and attitudes toward redistribution: Potential explanatory mechanisms. Political Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.13042
22.
MingH.ZuoC.ZhangF.RenY.ZhangH.HuangS. (2022). Positive affect decreases the negative association between social mobility belief and physical health among Chinese rural-to-urban migrant adolescents. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 143, Article 105846. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2022.105846
23.
ÖzerB. U. (2011). A cross sectional study on procrastination: Who procrastinate more?International Conference on Education Research and Innovation, 18, 34–37.
24.
PalmerL.RichardsonE. W.GoetzJ.FutrisT. G.GaleJ.DeMeesterK. (2021). Financial self-efficacy: Mediating the association between self-regulation and financial management behaviors. Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 32(3), 535–549. https://doi.org/10.1891/JFCP-19-00092
25.
ParkS. (2022). Relationship of self-determined motivation with time-related academic behavior in Korean primary school students: A person-centered approach. Heliyon, 8(10), Article e11191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11191
26.
PikettyT. (1995). Social mobility and redistributive politics. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110, 551–584. https://doi.org/10.2307/2946692
27.
SagioglouC.ForstmannM.GreitemeyerT. (2019). Belief in social mobility mitigates hostility resulting from disadvantaged social standing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(4), 541–556. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218789073
28.
SiroisF. M.GiguèreB. (2018). Giving in when feeling less good: Procrastination, action control, and social temptations. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57(2), 404–427. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12243
29.
SotoC. J.JohnO. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, 117–143. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096
30.
SteelP. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65
31.
TaylorD. M.MoghaddamF. M. (1994). Theories of intergroup relations: International social psychological perspectives (2nd ed.). Praeger.
32.
TuckmanB. W. (1991). The development and concurrent validity of the procrastination scale. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 51(2), 473–480. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164491512022
33.
WangX.WangX.ChenZ. (2023). High social mobility leads to delayed reproduction. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(4), 1365–1377. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02551-4
34.
XieJ.ZhangB.YaoZ.PengB.ChenH.GaoJ. (2022). The relationship between social mobility belief and learning engagement in adolescents: The role of achievement goal orientation and psychological capital. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 792108. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.792108
35.
ZhangS.BeckerB.ChenQ.FengT. (2019). Insufficient task-outcome association promotes task procrastination through a decrease of hippocampal–striatal interaction. Human Brain Mapping, 40(2), 597–607. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24397
36.
ZhangS.VergutsT.ZhangC.FengP.ChenQ.FengT. (2021). Outcome value and task aversiveness impact task procrastination through separate neural pathways. Cerebral Cortex, 31(8), 3846–3855. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab053
37.
ZhouM.LamK. K. L.ZhangY. (2022). Metacognition and academic procrastination: A meta-analytical examination. Journal of Rational-emotive & Cognitive-behavior Therapy, 40(2), 334–368. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-021-00415-1
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
