Motivated Procrastination

This study provides a rigorous empirical test for motivated memory as a cause for procrastination. In a longitudinal experiment over four weeks, individuals had to complete a cumbersome task of unknown length and receive noisy signals about their assigned workload. Varying scope for motivated memory results in more optimistic beliefs among workers who receive negative signals but not among those who receive positive ones. This suppression of negative news through motivated memory causes individuals to defer more work to the future.

This paper was accepted by Marie Claire Villeval, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Funding: Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [Grant CRC TRR 190 (project number 280092119)] is gratefully acknowledged.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2025.05353 .