Schemas Mediate the Link Between Procrastination and Depression: Results from the United States and Pakistan

“The bootstrapping procedure underlying PROCESS is advantageous primarily because this nonparametric quantitative method does not assume that the indirect effect is normally distributed—an assumption that is unfounded (Preacher and Hayes 2004).”

“Chronic procrastinators exhibit cognitive difficulties in selfcontrol when making rash decisions to engage in immediately pleasurable tasks in favor of tasks that require long-term goal pursuit (Sirois and Pychyl 2013; Tice et al. 2001).”

“Longitudinal studies indicate that procrastination actually precedes and confers risk to mental health problems (Rice et al. 2012; Tice and Baumeister 1997).”

“Specifically, cross-lagged panel models compare the direction of causal flow among different data structures, reduce the parameter bias resulting from crosssectional data, and provide enough time for the causal effects to take place (Selig and Preacher 2009).”

“The TPS-SF was initially normed on US college students and demonstrates good internal consistency (a = .90) and convergent validity with selfregulation tactics (Tuckman 1991).”

“Alternatively, the variables in our proposed model are inter-related to a moderately-high degree in samples from both countries (Aziz and Tariq 2013; Fee and Tangney 2000; Halvorsen et al. 2009; Jibeen 2015; McCown et al. 2012; Rice et al. 2012; Saleem and Rafique 2012; Sirois and Pychyl 2013).”

“Procrastination is associated with a variety of mental health problems, including depression (e.g., Spada et al. 2006; Stead et al. 2010).”

“Procrastination is a prevalent condition defined by self-regulation difficulties, particularly postponing the start and completion of important tasks (Ferrari et al. 2007; Ferrari and Tice 2000).”

“The Procrastination-Health model (Sirois et al. 2003) charts this pathway.”

“Finally, the TPS-SF is moderately correlated with measures of depression across culture (e.g., Stöber and Joormann 2001).”

“As a broad construct, maladaptive schemas account for significant variance in depressive scores cross-sectionally and longitudinally (Halvorsen et al. 2009; Welburn et al. 2002).”

“Despite such findings, mediating mechanisms remain unclear (Rozental and Carlbring 2014).”

“For instance, chronic and emotional procrastinators report lower estimates of self-esteem (Rebetez et al. 2015) and greater tendencies toward shame-proneness (Fee and Tangney 2000) and self-defeatism (Ferrari 1994).”

“Longitudinal studies indicate that procrastination actually precedes and confers risk to mental health problems (Rice et al. 2012; Tice and Baumeister 1997).”

“However, one emerging and important line of inquiry is to identify unique maladaptive schema themes specific to the experience and expression of depressive disorders (Hawke and Provencher 2011).”

“On one hand, Pakistani students are expected to adopt and adhere to different social dynamics and norms that may alter the experience and expression of mood-based disorders when compared against US peers (e.g., 332 S. Aftab et al. Chentsova-Dutton et al. 2015; Schreier et al. 2010).”

“Procrastination is a prevalent condition defined by self-regulation difficulties, particularly postponing the start and completion of important tasks (Ferrari et al. 2007; Ferrari and Tice 2000).”

“The position that chronic procrastinators suffer from a unique set 330 S. Aftab et al. of maladaptive cognitive schemas is supported by theoretical and empirical evidence (e.g., Flett et al. 1995).”

“Maladaptive schemas are stable, overgeneralized, and enduring cognitive-affective themes that distort how individuals select, store, and interpret incoming information (Riso et al. 2007).”

“With US college student samples, the CES-D demonstrates good internal consistency (a = .87–.91; Hill et al. 2015) and excellent convergent validity with measures of anxiety, affective liability, and distress intolerance (Pearson et al. 2015).”

“The lack of significant indirect effects for insufficient self-control schemas was a little surprising given previous research (Harrington 2005) and the strong bivariate associations found in the current study.”

“Alternatively, the variables in our proposed model are inter-related to a moderately-high degree in samples from both countries (Aziz and Tariq 2013; Fee and Tangney 2000; Halvorsen et al. 2009; Jibeen 2015; McCown et al. 2012; Rice et al. 2012; Saleem and Rafique 2012; Sirois and Pychyl 2013).”

“For instance, chronic and emotional procrastinators report lower estimates of self-esteem (Rebetez et al. 2015) and greater tendencies toward shame-proneness (Fee and Tangney 2000) and self-defeatism (Ferrari 1994).”

“The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between procrastination and depression (Rozental et al. 2015) as mediated by two cognitive schemas; we explored this in two very different samples of college students.”

“Cognitive vulnerabilities, like maladaptive schemas, remain relatively latent, often activated during periods of high stress and turmoil (Cámara and Calvete 2012).”

“Moreover, internal deficiencies associated with cognitive patterns of selfdiscipline, control, and frustration tolerance predicted the presence of major depressive episodes in these same participants and over the same time period (Halvorsen et al. 2010).”

“Procrastination is associated with a variety of mental health problems, including depression (e.g., Spada et al. 2006; Stead et al. 2010).”

“The TPS-SF also demonstrates solid internal consistency (a = .85–.90) and concurrent validity with measures of academic attitudes and efficacy in samples of college students enrolled in Eastern European and Western Asian universities (Özer et al. 2013; Tamadoni 2010).”

“With US college student samples, the CES-D demonstrates good internal consistency (a = .87–.91; Hill et al. 2015) and excellent convergent validity with measures of anxiety, affective liability, and distress intolerance (Pearson et al. 2015).”

“…the YSQ-S3 are only just emerging, preliminary 334 S. Aftab et al. studies demonstrate solid internal consistency (a = .72–.90) and excellent convergent validity with different measures of psychopathology in US older adolescent and college student samples (Damiano et al. 2015; Klibert et al. 2011).”

“In addition, using an experimental design, McCown et al. (2012) evaluated the thought processes of chronic versus nonprocrastinators during an induced dilatory task.”

“…the YSQ-S3 are only just emerging, preliminary 334 S. Aftab et al. studies demonstrate solid internal consistency (a = .72–.90) and excellent convergent validity with different measures of psychopathology in US older adolescent and college student samples (Damiano et al. 2015; Klibert et al. 2011).”

“336 S. Aftab et al. indirect effect via insufficient self-control was not significant; effect = .072, bootstrapped SE = .044, 95% CI [-.004, .169].”

“Similarly, the CES-D demonstrates solid internal consistency (a = .77) and excellent convergent validity with measures of rumination and anxiety in Western Asian college student samples (Besharat et al. 2014).”

“Similarly, evidence demonstrates adequate psychometric properties for the YSQ-S3 subscales in college student samples from Western Asian and Eastern Asian counties (Akbari et al. 2012; Yoo et al. 2014).”

“In addition, consistent with the recommendations from Klibert et al. (2016), the current study seeks to determine if the proposed indirect effects vary as a function of culture.”

“Alternatively, the variables in our proposed model are inter-related to a moderately-high degree in samples from both countries (Aziz and Tariq 2013; Fee and Tangney 2000; Halvorsen et al. 2009; Jibeen 2015; McCown et al. 2012; Rice et al. 2012; Saleem and Rafique 2012; Sirois and Pychyl 2013).”

“In our study, procrastination led to depression and anxiety symptoms over time, which is consistent with the procrastination-health model as well as previous cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence [18, 21, 31– 34].”