Eckert et al. (2016): Emotion Regulation Training and Procrastination
Eckert and colleagues tested whether procrastination falls when people get better at handling unpleasant emotions. Across three studies, ending with a two-arm randomised controlled trial, training the specific skills of tolerating and modifying aversive emotions reduced later procrastination. It is the clearest experimental support for treating procrastination as an emotion problem rather than a time-management problem.
| Citation | Eckert, M., Ebert, D. D., Lehr, D., Sieland, B., & Berking, M. (2016). Overcome procrastination: Enhancing emotion regulation skills reduce procrastination. Learning and Individual Differences, 52, 10–18. |
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| Study type | Three studies: cross-sectional, cross-lagged panel, and a two-arm randomised controlled trial |
| Key finding | Systematic training of two emotion regulation skills, tolerating and modifying aversive emotions, reduced procrastination |
| Mediating mechanism | The link between emotion regulation skills and procrastination ran through the ability to tolerate aversive emotions |
| Direction of effect | The cross-lagged study found it runs both ways: poor skills predicted later procrastination, and procrastination predicted worse later tolerance of aversive emotions |
| Replication | Schuenemann et al. (2022) ran a separate randomised trial of a 9-week online emotion regulation training with 148 students and found the same reduction |
What the research found
The paper builds its case in three steps. The first study established that emotion regulation skills and procrastination are related, and that the relationship runs through one specific skill: the ability to tolerate feeling bad. The second study followed people over time and found the direction of travel in both directions, which matters because it describes a loop rather than a one-way cause. People who could modify aversive emotions procrastinated less later on, and people who procrastinated became less able to tolerate aversive emotions later on. The third study was the test that counts: a randomised controlled trial in which training those two skills reduced procrastination compared with the control arm.
Why it matters
Most procrastination advice is logistical: better lists, better calendars, better timers. This paper is one of the few experiments showing that you can reduce procrastination without touching any of that, by changing how well someone copes with unpleasant feelings. It gives the emotion-regulation account of procrastination something it previously lacked, which is intervention evidence rather than correlations. In practice it supports techniques that work on the feeling rather than the schedule: sitting with the discomfort of starting, self-compassion after a slip, and naming the aversion instead of arguing with it.
Caveats
The trial arm is the smallest part of a three-study paper, not a large standalone clinical trial, and the samples are self-selected people interested in a training programme. Self-reported procrastination scales, not observed behaviour, are the outcome. The loop finding also complicates the practical story: if procrastinating erodes your tolerance for discomfort, then the people who need the skill most are the ones losing it fastest. Schuenemann and colleagues' 2022 trial with 148 students strengthens the picture but shares the self-report limitation.
Peer-reviewed in Learning and Individual Differences, open access, cited around 200 times. The independent replication is open access in Frontiers in Psychology.
Eckert, M., Ebert, D. D., Lehr, D., Sieland, B., & Berking, M. (2016). Overcome procrastination: Enhancing emotion regulation skills reduce procrastination. Learning and Individual Differences, 52, 10–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2016.10.001
Schuenemann, L., Scherenberg, V., von Salisch, M., & Eckert, M. (2022). 'I'll worry about it tomorrow': Fostering emotion regulation skills to overcome procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 780675. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780675
Eckert, M., Ebert, D. D., Lehr, D., Sieland, B., & Berking, M. (2018). Does SMS-support make a difference? Effectiveness of a two-week online-training to overcome procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1103. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01103
Related
Sirois (2016): procrastination as emotion regulationPychyl (2000): five days of emotionThe self-compassion breakUrge surfingWhy you procrastinate: the mood, not the clock
Frequently asked questions
Does emotion regulation training actually reduce procrastination?
In this paper's randomised trial it did, and a separate 2022 trial with 148 university students found the same thing after a nine-week online programme. Both measured procrastination by questionnaire rather than by observing behaviour, so the finding is promising rather than settled.
Which emotion regulation skills matter for procrastination?
Two specifically: tolerating aversive emotions and modifying them. Tolerance did most of the work in the mediation analysis, which fits the practical experience that starting a dreaded task is mostly a matter of being willing to feel bad for a few minutes.
Does procrastinating make you worse at handling emotions?
The cross-lagged study suggests yes, which is the uncomfortable part of the paper. Procrastination predicted a later drop in the ability to tolerate aversive emotions, so avoidance appears to feed the very weakness that causes it.