Abstract:

Introduction:
Pedagogical practices focused on student support and motivation intend to help students establish self-regulated academic behaviours and avoid adverse habits such as procrastination. Practitioners facing such a challenge may find value in how time perspectives (TP) and psychological need satisfaction (PNS) may interact to predict student procrastination. Teachers promote favourable impacts of their students’ future time perspective on study behaviour: for example, when supporting their formulation of attainable academic goals. Also, they try to limit the extent to which their students’ negative time perspectives may impact their academic process adversely: for example, when helping them ascribe new meanings to mistakes made, or make peace with aspects of their past learning experiences (bolstering against past-negative time perspective); or when helping them overcome discouragement, helplessness, or fear of failure (bolstering against present-fatalistic time perspective). However, it is important to understand whether the effects of time perspectives on procrastination depend on contextual conditions such as satisfaction of the psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. The present work asked if PNS may aid the favourable effects of positive time perspectives and limit the adverse effects of negative time perspectives on procrastination.

Method:
University students (N = 1188) reported their TPs, PNS, and procrastination via pen-and-paper questionnaires administered by their university teachers in regular class sessions. Effects of TPs on procrastination variations were analysed accounting for the potential moderating effect of PNS.

Results:
Findings showed that the positive time perspective of future time perspective had a negative (thus, favourable) effect on procrastination, which was strengthened by its interaction with competence need satisfaction. Also, the (adverse) positive effect of past-negative and present-fatalistic time perspectives on procrastination was alleviated by autonomy need satisfaction.

Discussion:
Findings show that future time perspective is important to counteract procrastination tendencies, but this counteraction may be enhanced when students’ competence need is satisfied by the social context. Similarly, past-negative and present-fatalistic time perspectives (negative TPs) promote procrastination but this effect is alleviated by satisfaction of the need for autonomy. These findings suggest that teachers and tutors may find value in supporting their students’ competence and autonomy need satisfaction in order to enhance or alternatively buffer the effects of respectively positive and negative time perspectives on student procrastination.

Keywords:

Future time perspective, competence need satisfaction, student procrastination.