A new perspective on academic procrastination: adaptive aspects and high procrastination wall theory

   The Introduction provides the author's definition of academic procrastination, a typical procrastination situation for a student. The need to give a definition is due to the complex nature of the phenomenon. The author outlines the main approaches to understanding the phenomenon under consideration. Academic procrastination is considered as: self-regulatory failure; way of coping with negative emotions; personality trait; strategy for effective problem solving in “deadline” frames.

   The purpose of our study is to consider academic procrastination from the point of view of its adaptive aspects and defensive function.

   The novelty of this study is to offer a new perspective on the academic procrastination issue in the educational environment as high procrastination wall theory.

   In addition, the author considers procrastination as an integral part of the sense structure of personality. In the “Theoretical justification” section, academic procrastination is described as an action of the barrier, deflective and disorganizing influence of semantic attitude (mindset). The author for the first time presented and described in detail a high procrastination wall theory, where the occurrence of academic procrastination is explained from the position of insufficient sense content of academic tasks and educational activities in general. In the “Discussion of results” section, academic procrastination is considered in the context of personality defense mechanisms. Procrastinating students most often use the mechanisms of “rationalization”, “regression” and “substitution”, which are adaptive and distort reality to a very small extent. In the “Conclusion” section, the author points out the need to change the approach to understanding academic procrastination, which in the long term can not only solve the problem of postponing tasks, but also increase interest in education and learning activities.

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