Banca de DEFESA: JULIA MENDES PACHECO SOARES

Motivation and academic procrastination: the role of environmental unpredictability during COVID-19 pandemic

Procrastination; COVID-19; Fundamental Social Motives; Stress; Life History strategy.

Defined as the voluntary delay of an intended course of action despite the expectation of inevitable negative consequences, procrastination remains poorly understood. Classic research has focused mainly on decision making, and only recently has individual motivation been included as a possible explanation for procrastination. Furthermore, there are almost no studies of this behavior from an evolutionary perspective, and the global pandemic situation generated by COVID-19 provides a rare opportunity to evaluate the influence of environmental cues on human motivation and procrastination. Hence, this study aimed to understand the phenomenon of academic procrastination based on its relationship with the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve this, the following hypotheses were tested: 1. The levels of academic procrastination of university students during the COVID-19 pandemic are related to their perception of environmental unpredictability; 2. Academic procrastination in the post-pandemic scenario is related to Life History strategies, as well as the Fundamental Motives for affiliation; 3. There is a relationship between indicators of anxiety, depression and stress and levels of post-pandemic academic procrastination. 216 participants answered, anonymously and online, six questionnaires relating to the analyzed parameters: Sociodemographic Questionnaire; Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21); Fundamental Motives Inventory; Mini-K (reduced version); Scale of Unpredictability Beliefs; and Academic Procrastination Scale, the last two referring to three periods: 2019, 2020, and 2022. The analysis was carried out taking into account two distinct dimensions of academic procrastination: procrastination and academic self-regulation, and the results were different for each one. Self-regulation showed a significant reduction during the pandemic for students who had an increase in unpredictability beliefs; furthermore, after the pandemic, this showed a significant positive correlation with Slow Life History strategies and self-protection motivations, as well as a negative correlation with the fundamental reason for affiliation (exclusion concern), with self-protection being the factor that best explains self-regulation; There was also a negative and significant correlation between self-regulation and depression. The postponement trait showed different results: there was no increase during the pandemic for participants who showed growth in unpredictability beliefs; however, in 2022, the positive and significant correlation between these two factors indicates the possibility that they are related, especially when considering that unpredictability beliefs have explanatory power almost twice as high as the fundamental motives of self-protection and affiliation (exclusion concern), the other two reasons that showed a correlation with postponement – negative and positive, respectively; Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between postponement and slow Life History strategies, as well as a positive correlation with levels of depression and stress. The results point to the need to study this phenomenon from a more thorough perspective, observing it as a complex behavior with different dimensions, which can be influenced by several factors internal and external to the individual, such as Life History strategies, unpredictability beliefs, motivations, mental health indicators, and others yet to be explored.