Precrastination, defined as the act of completing tasks immediately, often at the expense of increased effort or diminished quality of outcomes, is a phenomenon observed in certain individuals.
[2] Precrastination is considered an unhealthy behavior pattern and is accompanied by symptoms such as conscientiousness, eagerness to please, and high energy.
[3] People who precrastinate may try to find shortcuts to be more efficient and productive, but this may result in the application of non-effective energy management and cause the person to fulfill their tasks to an incomplete or insufficient degree.
[6] These surprising results from the first three experiments changed the goal of research to "describing and providing a theoretical interpretation of this astonishing phenomenon".
[6] The fourth experiment was used to confirm the finding of the previous three while reducing statistical variability by moving the starting position of the buckets six feet further from the participants.
[6] This attention hypothesis was tested by placing a screen at the end of the alleyway that told the participants to wait before starting the task, this could be for a two or four-second interval.
[6] Thereby confirming in the researchers’ mind that exertion did matter to participants, and despite this would engage in close-object preference when performing the other experiments.
[6] In April 2018 Lisa R. Fournier, Alexandra M. Stubblefield, Brian P. Dyre, and David A. Rosenbaum published a research article titled ‘Starting or finishing sooner?
An important factor for this experiment is the fact that the bucket selection didn't affect the total time to complete both of the transport tasks together.
[7] On November 30 of 2018 Lisa R. Fournier, Emily Coder, Clark Kogan, Nisha Raghunath, Ezana Taddese, and David A. Rosenbaum published a research article titled ‘Which task will we choose first?
Three, the addition of having half the participants memorize digit lists on top of performing the base physical action task mentioned previously.
This means that while previous research is upheld, there is additional support to the claim that precrastination is the result of cognitive load reduction.
[8] The following quote highlights the researcher's interpretation of their results for experiment two: “Participants in the water cup transport task largely abandoned the near-object-first preference".
[8] They believe this was the result of the participants having to "pay a great deal of extra attention to the task if they started with the near cup".
[9] Precrastination has also been observed in animal behavior, as evidenced by Edward A. Wasserman and Stephen J. Brzykcy publishing their paper ‘Pre-crastination in the pigeon’ in 2014.
[11] Evolution played an important role in making precrastination the “default response option” as animals' quick reactions and decisions might have been significant to their survival.
In contrast, when waiting to do a task the task-related information needs to be continuously remembered which can be taxing for one's working memory.
[14][15] In accordance to the limited capacity, Dr. Rosenbaum hypothesized that in order to off-load items stored within the working memory, people will try and complete certain tasks, even if this is at the expense of more physical effort.
This extra mental load was in the form of remembering a list of numbers that they had to recall after the task was completed.
[16][1] Recalling the list of numbers specifically targeted increases the mental load of the working memory of the participants.
Dr. Fournier found that the participants with the extra mental load were ninety percent more likely to precrastinate during the task.
Individuals often chose to carry the closest bucket first, despite the fact that such action results in an increased physical effort required for competition of the task.
[16] One critique to this theory is that lifting a bucket does not tax the working memory that much, so it is not clear if this is the only thing that is contributing to precrastination.
[13] The working memory off-loading perspective was expanded on by the cognitive-load-reduction (CLEAR) hypothesis created by Rachel VonderHaar and coauthors in 2019.
[18] According to the CLEAR hypothesis, there is a strong drive to reduce the cognitive load, therefore tasks that are most efficient in doing so will be prioritized.
[19][18] The CLEAR hypothesis includes off-loading working memory as well as freeing up other cognitive resources such as attention.
[6] Another positive consequence may be that we are able to gain a lot of information as quickly as possible about the costs and benefits of task-related behaviors.
[21] Sauerberger stated that no observable correlation with neuroticism might be due to other factors, such as the participants' awareness of no consequence following their action and no feeling of uncertainty involved in the experiments as seen in real-life situations.