Single subject design research paper

Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, 28:144–156, 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 8756-8225 print/1540-4730 online DOI: 10.1080/87568225.2014.883887

Acceptance and Commitment Training: A Brief Intervention to Reduce Procrastination Among

College Students

CAMILLE L. SCENT Private practice, Alpharetta, Georgia, USA

SUSAN R. BOES University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia, USA

Academic procrastination is a multifaceted problem with cog- nitive, behavioral, and motivational correlates. Considered from an acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) point of view, these correlates relate to experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion. This article describes a brief ACT intervention for reducing procrastination.

KEYWORDS acceptance and commitment therapy, college students, procrastination

Today’s college students are bombarded with more distractions than ever before: YouTube, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, chat, Skype, texting, not to mention old standbys like television and video games—countless ways to connect, explore and be entertained. Is it any wonder, then, that procrastination—the voluntary “delay [of] an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay” (Steel, 2007, p. 66)—is on the rise among this group (Kachgal, Hansen, & Nutter, 2001; Steel, 2007)?

What can college counselors do to stem this tide of dilatory behav- ior? Numerous factors contribute to procrastination, including the timing of rewards and punishments, task aversion, irrational beliefs, low self-efficacy, self-handicapping, and low conscientiousness (Steel, 2007). Popular inter- ventions focus primarily on helping students change cognitions related to these causes as well as teaching self-management/time management

Address correspondence to Camille L. Scent, EdS, 11815 Northfall Lane, Suite 1006, Alpharetta, GA 30009, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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skills (Schouwenburg, Lay, Pychyl, & Ferrari, 2004). However, Solomon and Rothblum (1984) noted that teaching time management alone is insufficient for reducing procrastination, and Longmore and Worrell (2007) reviewed numerous studies suggesting that directly challenging cognitions is not necessary in order to effect behavioral change.

An alternative to these strategies is acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). ACT posits that psychological problems stem from experiential avoid- ance and cognitive fusion, that is, taking thoughts literally (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2011). Treatment focuses on helping clients develop skills in nonjudgmental acceptance of present-moment thoughts and feelings in the service of pursuing valued life goals (Harris, 2009). Such a focus seems par- ticularly well suited to the treatment of procrastination, which is by definition a problem of avoidance (Dionne & Duckworth, 2011).

Russ Harris, a leading ACT trainer, has described ACT as “existen- tial humanistic cognitive behavioral therapy” (Harris, 2006). Developed out of a theory of language and cognition called relational frame theory and grounded in a philosophy of science called functional contextualism, ACT is an approach to therapy that incorporates mindfulness and acceptance processes into behavior change strategies. The aim of therapy is increased psychological flexibility, the ability to choose actions based on one’s val- ues even while experiencing unwanted or unpleasant private events, that is, thoughts and feelings. Rather than attempting to change or control unwanted thoughts, feelings, memories, and so forth, as traditional cognitive behavior therapy does, the focus in ACT is on altering the way such private events function. Experiential exercises, metaphors, and mindfulness training, along with more traditional behavioral interventions, are used to undermine the language traps that are theorized to cause cognitive fusion and experien- tial avoidance. A key difference between ACT and other psychotherapies is that these processes are viewed as a normal part of human psychology rather than as an indication of abnormality (Hayes, Masuda, & De Mey, 2003; Hayes et al., 2011; for a more thorough description of ACT, see http:// contextualscience.org/act).

The current article presents an intervention using training in ACT to ame- liorate procrastination among college students. Literature on procrastination is examined in light of ACT theory. Evidence concerning the prevalence and problematic nature of procrastination among college students is reviewed, antecedents and correlates of procrastination are considered, and relevant ACT processes explained. The workshop format and content are shared along with suggestions for implementation on college campuses.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Prevalence and Correlates

Data collected from more than 2,000 students during the early 1990s indicate that the behavior of procrastination is normally distributed among the college

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population, and the mean rate is high (Schouwenburg, 2004b). Zarick and Stonebraker (2009) found that nearly all college students admit to procras- tinating at least occasionally, and that 42% usually or always procrastinated despite consequences of poor quality work, missed deadlines, and lower grades.

Similarly, Solomon and Rothblum (1984) reported that 46% of college students procrastinated on term papers, 30% on reading assignments, and 27% on exam preparation, and that these behaviors caused problems for a majority of students. In a multidisciplinary meta-analytic review of more than 200 sources, Steel (2007) cited studies indicating that 50% to 95% of college students procrastinate, resulting in poor performance and dimin- ished well-being. Steel also found that a majority of people characterize procrastination as harmful and that 95% of procrastinators want to reduce the tendency.

Given the ubiquitous nature of procrastination and its negative con- sequences, it is not surprising that Schouwenburg (2004a) has identified a variety of contributors to this common problem. Students’ thoughts and feelings about tasks as well as their tendency to prefer activities offering immediate rather than delayed benefits all influence their susceptibility to procrastination. In addition, procrastination is often considered a personality trait (Ferrari, 2004; Schouwenburg, 2004b; Senécal, Lavoie, & Koestner, 1997; Steel, 2007, van Eerde, 2004).

COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIORAL CORRELATES

The desire to avoid unpleasantness is an intuitive motivation for delaying tasks, borne out in research findings. In one of the early and frequently cited studies on procrastination, Solomon and Rothblum (1984) found that dislike of the task was a primary contributor for 47% of students. Students who consider a task to be unpleasant, boring, or uninteresting are much more likely to delay starting and/or completing it; this is true even among stu- dents whose academic success is not negatively impacted by their delaying behavior (Schraw, Wadkins, & Olafson, 2007; Steel, 2007).

Steel (2007) has suggested that chronic procrastinators may simply find more of life’s tasks and duties aversive. Supporting this idea, Brownlow and Reasinger (2000) found that students with low rates of procrastination are more likely to find school tasks inherently satisfying than are severe procrastinators. In general, students seem to procrastinate more on tasks they perceive as effortful or anxiety provoking (Ferrari, 2004; Ferrari & Scher, 2000; Wolters, 2003; Zarick & Stonebraker, 2009).

The possibility of being evaluated on a task increases procrastination as well, prompting longer delays before starting an aversive task and slower rates of completion (Senécal et al., 1997). This finding suggests procrasti- nation is a form of self-handicapping and is related to a fear of failure. Senécal and colleagues (1997) suggested procrastination is widespread

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among college students because the omnipresent threat of evaluation acti- vates fear of failure. Students are more likely to procrastinate when they doubt their ability to complete a task successfully or have negative expecta- tions about a task (Seo, 2009; Wolters, 2003). However, students who forgive themselves for past procrastination are better able to focus on a current task and less likely to procrastinate on it (Wohl, Pychyl, & Bennett, 2010).

MOTIVATIONAL AND PERSONALITY CORRELATES

A sense of having little control over one’s life and of being vulnerable to external influences correlates positively with procrastination (Ferrari & Diaz- Morales, 2007). Senécal, Koestner, and Vallerand (1995) found that students who were intrinsically motivated were less likely to procrastinate than were externally or amotivated students. Similarly, Brownlow and Reasinger (2000) found that an external locus of control is predictive of procrastination.

Task salience is another predictor of procrastination. According to Zarick and Stonebraker’s (2009) rational choice theory of procrastination, students choose to procrastinate when the benefits they expect to receive now by delaying—more leisure time, avoidance of unpleasant tasks, and so forth— outweigh anticipated future costs such as anxiety, stress, lower quality work, and missed deadlines. This is similar to Schouwenburg’s (2004b) cost-benefit explanation for procrastination, in which future rewards are discounted in favor of more immediate rewards. As the once distant rewards become nearer in time, their perceived value increases, and procrastinators attend to them.

Schouwenburg (2004b) also suggested that procrastination is one per- sonality trait in a cluster of traits, including weak impulse control, lack of persistence, lack of work discipline, lack of time management skills and inability to work methodically, which cause delaying behavior. Steel’s (2007) review specified high distractibility, low organization, low achievement moti- vation, and high intention-action gap as personality constructs associated with procrastination and collectively reflecting self-regulatory failure.

The Relevance of ACT

If procrastination is generally conceived of as a failure in self-regulation, the specific triggers noted above can be grouped into three general areas: cogni- tive (the ideas students hold about their abilities and the tasks before them), behavioral (avoiding uncomfortable feelings triggered by a task), and moti- vational (discounting the importance of a task). ACT addresses these three areas through the processes of: acceptance and defusion, self-as-context and mindfulness, and values and committed action (Harris, 2009).

From an ACT standpoint, procrastination, like any other maladaptive behavior, reflects psychological inflexibility: the inability to contact the

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present moment as it is and to continue or change behavior in pursuit of valued ends (Hayes et al., 2011). The primary processes which lead to psychological inflexibility are cognitive fusion and experiential avoid- ance (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). Cognitive fusion occurs when an individual overidentifies, or fuses, with thoughts which then domi- nate behavior, restricting the available repertoire of responses (Harris, 2009; Hayes et al., 2011). Overidentification with thoughts often contributes to experiential avoidance: the attempt to control, eliminate, or avoid unwanted private experiences such as thoughts, feelings, and memories (Harris, 2009).

Cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance can be seen in many antecedents to procrastination. Students’ fears of failure, doubts about self-efficacy and/or negative thoughts about a task prompt uncomfortable feelings; students wish to avoid these feelings, and thus they delay start- ing and/or finishing the task. Fused with their thoughts about the task and naturally wanting to avoid discomfort, they lose sight of their goal to do well academically, resulting in procrastination and its potentially damaging effects.

As we have seen, research has identified task aversion, fear of failure, task salience, and locus of control as common contributors to procrastination. ACT conceptualizes these factors as indicators of psychological inflexibil- ity and offers an alternative and promising approach to treatment through development of:

● acceptance and defusion—the willingness to simply have thoughts, even unwanted ones, and to detach from the content of those thoughts;

● mindfulness and self-as-context—the ability to maintain nonjudgmental contact with present-moment experiences and have a sense of self that is flexible and recognizes the changing nature of experience; and

● values and committed action—the ability to identify closely held values and take actions that move in the direction of those values without needing to change thoughts or feelings (Biglan, Hayes, & Pistorello, 2008, Harris, 2009).

Together these processes promote psychological flexibility (Hayes et al., 2011) and can enable procrastination-prone students to make self-regulatory choices that promote their well-being and support their life goals.

Though Dionne and Duckworth (2011) note that ACT seems particularly well suited to the treatment of procrastination, no applications or studies test- ing this theory could be found in the literature. The next section describes a trial two-session workshop format using ACT as an intervention for reducing procrastination. Such a program shows promise for expanding the reach of services at university counseling centers.

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THE INTERVENTION

This program consisted of two 11/2-hour small group workshops, spaced one week apart, and held on campus. Participants were recruited through adver- tisements on the university’s electronic bulletin board system, announce- ments sent to faculty teaching orientation and psychology classes, and a notification in the campus faculty newsletter. Eight participants completed the first workshop; six also attended the second. Both workshops were held in a student center classroom and were led by the first author of this article. During the workshops, ACT concepts were introduced using metaphors and experiential exercises. Activities for the workshops were drawn from Harris (2009), Hayes and colleagues (2011), and the membership portion of the Association for Contextual and Behavioral Sciences Web site.

The workshop taught a three-step process for responding to procrasti- nating behavior: (a) insert a mindful pause, (b) accept and defuse, and (c) choose to act. The first step was designed to help participants recognize procrastination as a means of avoiding unwanted thoughts and feelings. The second step was intended to expand the repertory of behaviors possible in the presence of such experiences. The final step increased participants’ con- scious connection with their long-term values and goals in order to generate motivation for values-consistent action.

Workshop 1

Using a didactic approach, this workshop started with an open discussion of the definition of procrastination. After eliciting the essential idea that pro- crastination is the delay of a necessary task, I (the first author) presented scenarios to help clarify the difference between prioritizing tasks and pro- crastinating. The interaction was designed to raise students’ curiosity about knowing when they are procrastinating and to introduce the question of whether it is the task itself or something else that is being avoided.

Students were next asked about their experiences of completing a task which they had delayed. The ensuing discussion was guided to highlight the common experience of positive feelings, including relief, associated with completion of a delayed task. Such sentiments were again used to explore what exactly is being avoided when someone procrastinates.

Moving to an experiential exercise, participants were next asked to bring to mind a current task that they were putting off. (If nothing came to mind, they could recall a recent experience of procrastination.) After being asked to close their eyes, they were guided through a mindfulness exercise that included noting thoughts and bodily sensations arising as they contem- plated the task. The ensuing discussion highlighted the common feature of unpleasantness associated with these observed thoughts and sensations.

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These activities culminated with a presentation of the ACT perspective that procrastination is about avoiding uncomfortable thoughts and feelings associated with a task rather than the task itself. I stressed that desiring to avoid uncomfortable thoughts and/or feelings is normal and expressed empathy for the usually counterproductive results that ensue when this desire drives behavior.

To illustrate this phenomenon in a lighthearted way, the metaphor of “passengers on the bus” was introduced (Hayes et al., 2011). This defusion exercise is explained as follows:

You are the driver of a bus along the road of your life. Things are gen- erally pretty good on your bus. As you drive along, you turn the bus toward a new destination. Soon, you notice that some passengers in the back of the bus start to become unruly. They stand up and make noise, demanding you change course back to the other path. When you don’t comply, they get louder and more obnoxious, using name calling and threatening language to get you to change course away from this new destination. The closer you get to the destination the more obnoxious and threatening they become. Reasoning with them doesn’t work; they won’t shut up and they won’t leave the bus. Unable to get rid of them, your only option for restoring peace is to give in to their demands and change course. As soon as you steer away from the destination they didn’t like, they begin to simmer down, eventually retreating quietly to the back of the bus.

The unruly passengers, I explained, represent uncomfortable and unwanted thoughts and feelings triggered by a task; steering away from the task, or procrastinating, temporarily relieves the stress of experiencing these sensations. The desire to get to the task remains, however, so the pattern repeats; as the driver steers once more toward the task, noisy and belligerent passengers begin heckling until the course is again changed away from the task. Eventually, either the driver gives up trying to get to that destination or decides to speed over to the destination as quickly as possible, yelling at and arguing with the bellicose passengers all the way. Neither giving in to the passengers’ demands nor fighting with them leads to a satisfactory result. The passengers stay on the bus, repeating the cycle whenever triggered by a similar destination.

After this metaphor was explained, participants were invited to consider whether it might describe what happens when they procrastinate. Discussion focused on options for responding to the unruly passengers, who cannot be made to stay quiet or removed from the bus. Acceptance of both their presence and the drivers’ inability to control their behavior was noted as the first key for the driver to stay on course. The second key was realizing that although these unwanted passengers sounded extremely threatening, they in

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fact could not cause harm to the driver. The tendency to fuse with thoughts and to respond to them as if they were real, rather than recognizing that they are simply thoughts, was discussed.

Next came the brief defusion exercise “milk, milk, milk” (Hayes et al., 2011). Participants are asked first to imagine a cold glass of milk, the facil- itator narrating all the sensory qualities that recollecting this image evokes (feelings, smells, tastes, etc.), and remarking on the ability of the mind to bring an idea to life—to make it seem real—with just a word. The facilitator then pointed out that in reality there was no milk in the room; the sounds a voice makes saying “milk” are really just that, sounds. Despite our automatic and conditioned response to sounds, it is possible to separate our response from the sounds. To illustrate, the facilitator asked participants to repeat the word “milk” aloud together as fast as they all could for one minute, then check whether they still had the sensory experience of “milk” in response to the word. “Milk” now had become just a sound, temporarily removed from its fusion with the previously recalled sensory experience.

Defusion techniques like this one are useful for helping the mind to recognize thoughts as just thoughts, rather than what the thoughts say they are. The facilitator also presented other techniques, such as acknowledging and thanking one’s mind for whatever thoughts it comes up with, restating a thought with the preface “I’m having the thought that . . . ,” and singing thoughts out loud in a funny or silly voice. All can help students recognize thoughts as thoughts rather than as their content.

To facilitate awareness, workshop participants were instructed to notice during the coming week every instance when they found themselves pro- crastinating and in that moment to practice mindfulness for a few minutes, observing their thoughts and feelings. They could, if they chose, try a defusion skill at that point. The main focus, though, was simply on increas- ing awareness. Participants were taught a simple exercise, mindfulness of the breath, and instructed to practice it daily for 5–10 minutes, to increase their general level of mindful awareness.

Workshop 2

The focus of the second workshop was increasing participants’ awareness of contact with their personal values and framing the costs of procrastination as interfering with those values. In addition, mindfulness and defusion skills were reinforced. The session began with students sharing their experiences of practicing mindfulness during the week and then moved to exploring values, in particular values related to education.

The distinction between values and goals was made by using a compass metaphor: values are the direction or heading for one’s life, and goals are destinations encountered along the journey of life; a goal can be achieved or

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accomplished, whereas a value is a way of being that doesn’t have an end. Students were given a list of common personal values and asked to select five to 10 that were most relevant for them. After sharing and discussing these, participants were then guided through an exercise writing out in their own words their values in the areas of education/school and work/career and then specifying short-term and long-term goals that support their values. These inquiries opened up a rich discussion, which culminated in partic- ipants identifying specific tasks or actions that would move them toward their short-term goals.

The facilitator then asked how procrastination might interfere with accomplishing the identified tasks and achieving their goals. The bus metaphor was recalled and further discussion ensued around ways to deal with the disturbing thoughts and emotions when they arose. Strategies reviewed included visualizing the metaphor (turning each thought into a funny, cartoonish monster shape on the bus), repeating a particularly painful word rapidly until it lost its sting and became merely a sound, and recalling in clear detail why the destination is important and worth travelling to even with unruly passengers/thoughts. An additional idea was to create visual reminders of personal values and goals and put these in locations where procrastination is likely to occur.

The importance of self-compassion was emphasized, along with the perspective that the phenomenon participants struggle with is a by-product of being human, something everyone experiences. Angry attempts to get rid of unwanted thoughts and passive attempts to placate them both fail to get participants where they really want to go. A different approach is what’s needed. Concluding instructions encouraged participants to set realistic goals for reducing procrastination and to implement their newly learned skills in service of their goals and values.

To assess the workshops’ effectiveness in increasing participants’ psy- chological flexibility, as well as the connection between psychological flexibility and the tendency to procrastinate, three quantitative measures were administered: the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II (AAQ- II; Bond et al., 2011), the Procrastination and Assessment Scale–Students (PASS; Solomon & Rothblum, 1984) and the Multi-dimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (MEAQ; Gaméz, Chmielewski, Kotov, Ruggero, & Watson, 2011). Although the link between low flexibility and high pro- crastination scores was inconsistent, every participant who attended both workshops and completed the follow-up measures demonstrated an increase in psychological flexibility. In addition, on a simple follow-up survey, all participants indicated they would recommend the workshops to others and a majority said they had experienced a decrease in procrastination behaviors.

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DISCUSSION

Throughout this two-session ACT workshop our student participants were engaged and responsive. Most of them provided anecdotal feedback indi- cating they found the program worthwhile. The passengers on the bus metaphor and the mindfulness training were cited as the most helpful aspects of the program, while defusion was cited as a confusing concept. In future workshops, I would recommend incorporating defusion throughout the pro- gram rather than simply as a discrete step. Asking participants to notice what their minds are telling them about the ideas presented in the workshops, or about their procrastination habits, could easily be an ongoing aspect of the program that would facilitate defusion while providing an experiential introduction to the concept.

One participant shared that the passengers on the bus metaphor helped him tolerate emotional discomfort and engage in work he typically put off doing because, as he explained, he valued being autonomous and self- directed. Helping students identify and connect with what is personally meaningful to them is a key component in helping them utilize ACT to overcome procrastination. Many students in this workshop had difficulty identifying what was important to them, however. Although all agreed they wanted to make good grades, they had difficulty connecting this goal to a deeper value. To facilitate this awareness, the values component of the pro- gram could be introduced earlier in the workshop through a values inventory and by inviting students to reflect on their life goals as a homework exercise between workshops.

Given that many students will find seeking help for procrastination easier than seeking help for other, more stigmatizing mental health issues, college counselors can expand their reach on campus by offering an ACT workshop such as the one presented here. An additional idea for extend- ing the program’s reach is to offer it online as a virtual workshop, perhaps including a (private) social networking component for support between ses- sions. An additional benefit of offering this type of program is that an ACT intervention has the potential not only to help students procrastinate less but also to help them develop skills for general mental health. In a meta-analysis of ACT outcome studies, Hayes and colleagues (2006) found that higher lev- els of psychological flexibility consistently correlate with lower incidences of psychopathology and with higher quality of life indicators.

In the ACT conception of procrastination, rather than leading a vibrant life in pursuit of meaningful ends, procrastinators spend their time chasing after the elusive end of temporary ease, disconnected from their deeper values. This preliminary workshop experience suggests that it is possible to interrupt that cycle, to help students connect with their underlying values and find meaning in their work, so they can reduce, if not eliminate, the self-defeating problem of procrastination.

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RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ACT

The public section of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) Web site (www.contextualscience.org) maintains a wealth of resources for learning and using ACT, as well as for learning relational frame theory on which ACT is based. Members have access to additional resources. In keeping with the organization’s own values, the dues system is values- based; members are asked to determine their own membership fee based on the value they derive from the organization.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors thank Meaghan Muller for serving as research assistant for this study.

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