UC Riverside

Precrastination is doing something early at an extra cost. That cost may impact financial well-being, health, or physical or mental effort. Although the scientific community is developing interest in this new phenomenon, it has yet to be related to individual differences. Using 300 participants, I replicated one of the designs found in the study that first described the phenomenon (Rosenbaum et al., 2014) and added a wide array of personality measures. Participants were asked to walk along a path and to pick up a bucket on the way to the end of the walking path. Before participating in this part of the study, howeverBecause there was no guidance in the literature regarding the relationships between personality traits and precrastination, a broad, exploratory approach was taken. Self-report measures assessed: the Big Five traits, a separate set of 100 broad personality items, procrastination, intolerance of uncertainty, ego-resiliency, impulsiveness, and coordination. These constructs come from the literature on procrastination. I found that precrastination was positively related to conscientiousness and the extraversion facet of energy. I also found that precrastination was not related to impulsiveness and procrastination, suggesting that the choice to precrastinate is not an illogical choice. Further evidence supporting this inference is that those in my study who rated themselves as uncoordinated were less likely to choose the first bucket. That is, participants who rated themselves as clumsy minimized the time that they were carrying a weighted object.