On any given day, I would like to think that I take a pretty good stab at my homework. But the days go on, and assignments pile up, and two days have passed since and I haven’t finished a single one of them, hardly cracked a dent even. Yet I seldom feel the stress or the anxiety attached to the my admittedly sluggish work speed. Until the 11th hour, when my stomach twists and turns in knots and screams and urges me to just sit down and power through it. And I think to myself: “where was this motivation (read: crippling anxiety) two days ago when I had all the free time in the world?” And then I remember that I scrolled through memes and repeated mantras of cognitive dissonance in my head until I simply forgot that I had things I should be doing.
Even now as I sit here at 9PM, twelve hours before the due date (which I’m sure isn’t very long for most people to finish this assignment), I find myself contemplating how this will affect my grade (a lot), how little choice I have in blowing off this assignment, or perhaps how hard I can lean on my current good grades (probably not as much as I would like).
And that’s why I decided to blog about the ever-present cognitive dissonance I hear when deadlines keep on truckin’ at me.
Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory describes how people will go to great lengths and expend copious amounts of mental effort to justify irrational behavior [1]. Or, as it applies to me, how I try to convince myself not to do my homework when I know I’m going to struggle.
[2]
Except, it really is. I watched my grade drop a half letter for missing a day of class. My grade will be abolished if I don’t do this assignment. This is me trying to change my own attitude to avoid doing something that I might struggle with or find unpleasant.
If I don’t do this now, I won’t do it then. This could also very easily refer to how infrequent I find time to do any sort of activity that I still probably do far more often than I should. This is me trying to reduce my sense of perceived choice in the matter, to soften the “inevitable” blow from when I quit.
But I do care. I care so deeply, because this class will affect my GPA, which is in a very impressionable place right now. I need to do well in this class, so my GPA doesn’t tank, so I can get a good job, and I won’t be destitute, or stuck with a job that I hate because it’s the best I could do with my garbage transcript. This is a reduction of the importance of this assignment.
We both know it’s not going to be just twenty minutes. This isn’t a negotiation, it doesn’t work like that. I am trying to change my perception of taking a “short” break, but I’ve spent enough time caught up on [insert any mobile app here] to know that it’s never as short as you want it be.
And here I am, at the end of this assignment that I dreaded doing for weeks. Finished.
Even now as I sit here at 9PM, twelve hours before the due date (which I’m sure isn’t very long for most people to finish this assignment), I find myself contemplating how this will affect my grade (a lot), how little choice I have in blowing off this assignment, or perhaps how hard I can lean on my current good grades (probably not as much as I would like).
And that’s why I decided to blog about the ever-present cognitive dissonance I hear when deadlines keep on truckin’ at me.
Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory describes how people will go to great lengths and expend copious amounts of mental effort to justify irrational behavior [1]. Or, as it applies to me, how I try to convince myself not to do my homework when I know I’m going to struggle.
[2]
Figure 1. Accurate Depiction of My Time in College
“You can pass without doing this assignment. It’s not that important.”
“It’s not every day your brother and his pregnant wife come to town. Go hang out, you can finish this before you go to bed.”
If I don’t do this now, I won’t do it then. This could also very easily refer to how infrequent I find time to do any sort of activity that I still probably do far more often than I should. This is me trying to reduce my sense of perceived choice in the matter, to soften the “inevitable” blow from when I quit.
“I don’t care if I do poorly in this class, I just need to pass.”
But I do care. I care so deeply, because this class will affect my GPA, which is in a very impressionable place right now. I need to do well in this class, so my GPA doesn’t tank, so I can get a good job, and I won’t be destitute, or stuck with a job that I hate because it’s the best I could do with my garbage transcript. This is a reduction of the importance of this assignment.
“I’ll just take a twenty minute break to play Jackbox with the house, and then I’ll come right back.”
We both know it’s not going to be just twenty minutes. This isn’t a negotiation, it doesn’t work like that. I am trying to change my perception of taking a “short” break, but I’ve spent enough time caught up on [insert any mobile app here] to know that it’s never as short as you want it be.
And here I am, at the end of this assignment that I dreaded doing for weeks. Finished.
Works Cited
[1] S. Kassin, S. Fein and H. Markus, Social Psychology, Cencage Learning, 2013.
[2] J. Clear, "Procrastination: A Brief Guide on How to Stop Procrastinating," [Online]. Available: https://jamesclear.com/procrastination. [Accessed 27 February 2019].
I think anyone can relate to the effects of cognitive dissonance when it comes to school work. I often find myself watching several episodes of shows and I’ll tell myself that this next episode will be the last one but then I see that the episode after that is “Stress Relief: Part 1” which is one of my favorite The Office episodes. Next thing you know I’ve reached the “Goodbye, Michael” episode and I’m too sad to do anything now. It is now nearing 7:00 and the game is going to be on and I absolutely cannot miss the game. However, I tell myself “Okay… you have to work on your homework while watching the game. I can totally do that.” But… I didn’t. I can’t multitask very well, and I know that, but I tell myself I can. My eyes were glued to the TV and by the time the game is over I sit there and I think, “I did nothing today… why am I like this?”. This happens to college students often (as you went over), and we often have a “it can wait” or a “due tomorrow?... DO tomorrow” kind of attitude at times. We do some work and decide that we deserve a break for all that “hard work” we did, but end up in a worm hole of distractions. As described in our textbook, there are several ways in which we try to avoid dissonance by using techniques such as changing your attitude, adding consonant cognition, and reducing perceived choice. It’s kind of a crazy thing that we try to convince ourselves that our bad behaviors were for a good reason or that we had no other choice. We are excuse-makers to a certain extent and want to lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better. Even marketing uses these techniques to make people feel not as bad about buying something. An example of this would be the cereal Cookie Crisp. We all know that this cereal cannot be very healthy, but on the box, it advertises how it offers vitamins, a good source of calcium, and calories. So, people will think that it can’t be bad for their health with these benefits. I find this type of advertising very interesting and kind of amazing way to sell products.
ReplyDeleteWorks Cited
Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. (2017). Ways to Reduce Dissonance. In S. Kassin, S. Fein, & H. R. Markus, Social Psychology 10th edition (p. 248). Boston. MA: Cengage Learning.
As sad as I am to admit, I also have been guilty of having the due tomorrow... do tomorrow attitude. It's affected me in a number of classes during my first year here at tech. I always wanted to spend more time with my friends and then we'd get our work done, but more often than not we would be so tired after we'd just go to bed. This year I've definitely done it on some assignments, but I now set aside time each night to do homework that will be done during the week, to give myself time to relax and not be doing homework for the entirety of the weekend. Its a difficult thing to do, to not allow yourself to not get distracted, but its needed for me. I tend to put anything that could distract me from my homework in a different room or put them somewhere where I cant easily get to them.
DeleteAs much as I would like to, I've decided against just commenting a list of my "favorite" ways to procrastinate doing homework. But let me just tell you that they are absolutely riveting /s. Given that my homework often involves programming, I can't put my laptop away, so I do have to fight myself to not get sucked into the wonderful world of garbage Youtube videos and bad financial Amazon decisions. However, I feel what has helped me the most was doing my homework near my friends. For whatever reason, it really seems to help keep me motivated.
DeleteI do agree that cognitive dissonance is a real struggle to deal with. I don't really feel it when it comes to getting homework done, I've done 19 productive hours of homework in the last 7 days including today, but it shows up a lot in other parts of my life. I find hygiene to be very important. I shower and wear clean clothes everyday but through cognitive dissonance, I no longer brush my teeth as often as I think I should. I do my best to brush my teeth once everyday, and absolutely not more than two, but more than I year ago, I used to go almost a week which I know is really gross. I knew I should brush my teeth at least once a day if not twice but all of a sudden I started realizing I wasn't making sure to brush my teeth. It was when I slept over at a friend's house a lot but never thought to bring a toothbrush. I would lay in bed thinking “Crap, I haven't brushed my teeth tonight” and it would definitely bother me but eventually I would fall asleep. Soon it became normal to not brush my teeth at night (and I already had not been brushing my teeth in the morning before this) since I did not feel an immediate negative impact. The new phrase became “Holy crap, I haven't brushed my teeth in X days!” at which point I would use my break in the middle of the day just to brush my teeth. When I was ten years old, this would never have happened. It would terrify me to think about not brushing my teeth at night since I thought I would immediately get cavities but that has changed over the years. This whole incident of not brushing my teeth is another prime example of how cognitive dissonance changes our attitudes for the worse. There are probably more examples of cognitive dissonance in my life but this was the first concrete one to come to mind. I would like to add two things. First, doing your post on the cognitive dissonance you felt concerning writing this blog was pretty ingenious. Second, if anyone is interested in further reading on cognitive dissonance I would suggest reading this book: “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts”. I haven't gotten very far in the book yet but it has been an easy read so far and my dad highly recommends it.
ReplyDeletePlease, I don't deserve that kind of praise for this post. I just tried to find something that I knew to write about. And this was really the only thing I knew. I found an audiobook for that book, so I might end up listening to that book, it sounds interesting.
DeleteI really feel the '19 hours of productive work' thing really bad right now. I've finished less than half of the assignments that I need to have finished by Friday (haven't messed any, just haven't started), and somehow I've convinced myself [for the past 3 weeks] that I can do my homework while watching American Dad. On one hand, it takes me forever to do my homework. But on the other, I'm already on season 7. It's about the small victories.
I am very bad with procrastination and telling myself "Oh I will get it done eventually" or "I have all day tomorrow to get it done." I have never just simply skipped an assignment unless it was accidental but I most certainly have waited till the last minute to get it done. I think this all began because I did not realize now difficult college really can be if you do not apply yourself because of high school. What I mean by that is I was a solid student in high school, graduating with a 3.6 gpa and putting in very minimal effort so I thought I could do the same in college. This was more of an issue tho during my first couple years of college and I am paying for it now. I began as a Psychology major actually and was only worried about passing and getting my degree because I had no plan or intention of grad school. Well after my first year and a half I wanted to chase the dream of being a Physical Therapist. For those of you who do not know, PT school is very competitive and therefore very hard to get into and with my lack of focus in my first year and a half I have been on an uphill climb to improve my grades as best I can for my application process. This is my own personal example of how the issue of cognitive dissonance can really affect your everyday life and even your future if the repercussions are not realized quickly enough.
ReplyDeleteAs Sophia mentioned above what a clever way to use this assignment. I just have a few questions for you. Before taking this class did you realize the extent at which you were doing this with school work and if you didn't do you think knowing the theory can help with procrastination with future assignments?
ReplyDeleteI found an additional video it doesn't have to do with school work but it gives other great examples like yours above about Cognitive Dissonance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVR4n8NbSBs
Honestly, Sophia, I can't speak for her but for me, before taking this class, I knew what I was doing when I was procrastinating. The issue was not with whether I knew or not it was the matter of caring. I think the issue comes with priorities and maturity. Like I said in my other response, I used to not care and not think it would take much effort to receive good grades in college because school came pretty easy to me in high school. It wasn't until I understood that my gpa mattered for grad school that I got my ducks in a row and started really putting the work in. So again, I am not answering this for her, I am just saying for me personally, I knew what I was doing but I guess I just did not really care because I wanted to have fun and just get by.
DeleteHey Ben,
DeleteIt's good to hear from you too because like I said I have never really struggled with procrastination so I wondered if having an understanding of this theory could help anyone struggling with this to find strategies of how to help with this behavior. Yeah, a lot changes happen going from High School to College so I can see how that transition can have a huge effect on behaviors especially when you are trying to get into PT school where grades have such a huge impact.
Before this class, I did find myself struggling with the same kinds of thoughts and serial procrastination. The reason this class interests me is actually because it makes sense. A lot of this class has felt like just putting words to feelings I've already had, the way that these behaviors are explained. I felt the exact same with HU2910 - Language and Mind (10/10 recommend).
DeleteToday, I am still able to convince myself to procrastinate. In the moment, it doesn't really feel like I need to convince myself to start doing one thing or the other. I may come home and start playing Smash instead of doing homework. The kicker is that I'll be knee deep in a game and I'll remember that I have important things due tomorrow morning, and I'll instantly banish the thought from my mind and play for another hour.
The fact that I can relate to this so much is almost painful. I play a good amount of video games that reward you for playing on a weekly, or even daily basis (bonus items in Pokémon GO, weekend events in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, the list goes on). As these are games I play regularly anyway, I instinctively give them priority in situations where there are more important matters I should be worrying about. "If I break my daily streak now, everything I did the last few days to build it up will be for naught," is something I find myself thinking quite a bit. It's not something I'm proud of when I have assignments and other deadlines to meet, especially considering you can only use the excuse "I have plenty of time, so I can just do it later" so many times before it becomes outright untrue. But I still admit that it's hard to fight that nagging feeling when: a) you're not motivated to do the more important tasks, and b) the stuff you typically occupy yourself with instead tends to be more entertaining anyway. Even when you know putting your nose to the grindstone is better in the long run, we far too frequently procrastinate because it feels better in the moment.
ReplyDeleteProcrastination from video games was a huge issue of mine, especially in the past. In fact, in grade school I'd get Cs and Ds in many classes and entirely refuse to do a lot of the work because of an addiction to video games. In high school I managed to improve enough to get 3.5 or higher GPA despite staying pretty addicted to video games (I'm not sure how I pulled that off). Fortunately now I'm able to manage my time better, but there are still situations where, due to social pressure on an MMO for example, I'll play it instead of doing the work I should be doing. And this definitely makes my life harder when I end up having far less time to do lots of work that has to get done.
DeletePreaching to the choir. My MWF classes are wrought with me going on PoGo. It was really bad last year, when I played far more regularly. I was able to justify leaving class once or twice, just because there was a rare spawn right across the way. Honestly, from an outside perspective, the amount of times that I justify my own bad behavior by changing my perception of the behavior is really disgusting.
DeleteProcrastination and cognitive dissonance seem to be very closely related to me. If I just think to myself that tomorrow I have so much more time then the little hour I have today, it would be dumb to start something now if I can’t finish it, what if I forget where I’m going with something”, I’ll put if off entirely. It’s a terrible thing to do, but sometimes I can’t seem to help it, my mind just is so persuasive at times, especially if I’ve been busy the whole day doing mind intensive tasks. This last year I’ve decided to try doing some different things, where I hide the fun things when I go to work on things so I can’t get distracted, I do homework in chunks of one hour and then take a 5-10-minute break so I don’t get too wore out too quickly. That is an important thing since I tend to burn myself out on assignments if I just do them one right after the other on the day, they’re due or the night before. Then for the rest of the time I become more vulnerable to the thoughts in my head to just take a break and watch some shows.
ReplyDeleteI totally tried doing that once, but I got sucked into the meme pages on Facebook. I actually disabled the FB app on my phone to try to dissuade myself from it, but not even a day later, I just went to the really garbage mobile site. I did that at the beginning of the fall semester, and we're halfway done with spring. I go on Facebook everyday, and I am still somehow convinced that keeping the app disable will somehow help me not use it, so I still torture myself with the mobile site. I think my real problem is willpower; I succumb to the dissonance too easily, in all aspects of my life. I started this semester telling myself I was done with drinking soda. Within the week, I was back drinking my favorite tea (which is essentially just soda that wasn't carbonated), and a week after that, I was drinking Pepsi like someone bet me I couldn't.
DeleteProcrastination is an ugly cycle that unfortunately needs to be cured with failure. Every time you squeak through an assignment, barely getting it at the last minute, you're feeding the beast inside that makes you procrastinate harder. Or at least, that's how it works for me. My first two years at at school I was on academic probation every other semester. My whole Junior year I have been in the clear, but it took rock bottom, the last time I was on probation to begin to confront my procrastination problems instead of just blindly listening to years of bad habits. I wish you the best of luck in doing the same.
ReplyDeleteThank you. It's been going a lot better this semester, compared to a really bad last semester. But the real issue here is what defines rock bottom. My rock bottom was failing a class, but I'm still actively trying to change my own attitude. For instance, I can convince myself that I don't mind missing a quiz or two, or that I can start my prelabs the day of the lab and finish before lab. But my aforementioned brother had to fill out a third take form, and he is still procrastinating and trying to change his attitude and perception about his schoolwork. He decided to take a year off, and since then, it seems like he has been doing much better for himself, in terms of work ethic.
DeleteI, too, have issues with procrastination. For me, I do best when the work is relevant to me. I'm a programmer and CS major and so I find it easy to do work related to programming and CS, and I find it especially easy to do work that is directly beneficial for my own programming projects. That's because it's directly "relevant" to me. For classes I must take outside of that, including this psychology class, I want to say things like "I'll be fine with a B in the class..." while I'd normally go for As in the CS classes. And then I'd use that as justification for skipping class or not doing as high quality of work. However, I don't like to get Bs and getting Bs will affect my GPA regardless of whether the class is within my major or not. This creates some level of cognitive dissonance - I want to get As, but I also would rather focus my time into CS/programming. This is true even though I actually love psychology and the information I learn from it, but when it comes to doing actual work I have to try harder.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe I have ever heard a college student express to me that procrastination wasn't a problem in their life. Why do we all share this common experience of not wanting to do things that will have a large effect on our happiness later on? We say we procrastinate because there is something else that will make us happier in the moment. If we stopped the procrastinating and did the action before we started to stress out about it, wouldn't that make us happier in the long run? I am more motivated by things that I am interested in compared to things that I see as more of an obligation. This is shown in my life when it come to homework for different classes. I end up dragging my feet on homework for classes that I see as an obligation rather than just trying to do my best and get through it efficiently; I'll take breaks, try to multitask, tell myself I should eat something when I'm not even hungry. For classes that I'm interested in I get the homework done days before and I make sure there are no distractions around me while I'm doing it. I have heard quite a few suggestions for trying to over come "procrastination" but it doesn't seem like any of those have worked very well.
ReplyDeleteLearning about cognitive dissonance and reading your blog has opened my eyes to how often I actually partake in this. I find myself only procrastinating when it is something unimportant or that I do not think will be very taxing to do. I think more about reasons why I did not do my homework earlier to justify my bad decision. However when it comes to exams, I barely ever procrastinate and start studying early. I use the theory of cognitive dissonance more in other aspects in life. For example after reading this, I now realize I do this when I eat unhealthy. If I eat too many sweets or get fast food too often, I start to defend my actions by telling myself that I will work it off or that I will not do it anymore. Overall, I really enjoyed this blog post and it provided a new insight on how I partake in cognitive dissonance.
ReplyDeletePreach. I told myself that I was going to stop using the elevator and start taking the stairs up and down 6 flights every day. I legitimately did not do that even once. I told myself that it would take me too long to walk up and down that I wouldn't have enough time to do my homework, as if I was ever going to do my homework.
DeleteWhile reading this article, I could not help but feel the guilt building up inside my own head as I am a culprit of this exact behavior as well. College is full of possibilities and new experiences that sometimes those experiences outweigh the homework, at least for the time being. The fact that I am writing my reply at 11 PM the night before it is due should hint that this behavior is something very common. Or even with the mindless scrolling through content, seems to default to distressing from all the college work being done...but I haven't looked at the assignment for hours. This was a great post and a relatable one for sure.
ReplyDeleteDo you have any strategies to help you break out of the procrastination cycle?
DeleteAs a fellow member of the putting homework off until the very last possible minute club, I have a deep respect and appreciation for this post. Not only did you choose a very relatable topic, but you also added personality to the post that made the subject much more approachable and easy to absorb. One of the reasons I enjoy taking psychology classes so much as an Engineer is because they are so applicable to everyday aspects of life and they feel worth learning about. In that vein I was wondering if in your study of cognitive dissonance as it relates to procrastination if you found any strategies to combat this problem shared by so many in our demographic?
ReplyDeleteI can 100% relate to this. I myself have often taken far too long to work on assignments, which is a habit that started at a young age. A skipped homework assignment here or there, a test not studied for, and suddenly I have my first ever F on a test in 4th grade (in all fairness, it was a science class test about.... trees and forests. Not my favorite topic), despite being a straight A/B student before that.
ReplyDeleteEven now as I type this, I'm late. I clicked on every single blog post on the blog, looked at the ones I haven't commented on (about 20), and am now commenting on every single one, because I noticed one or two zeroes under blog grades. Why? Because it's imperative I get a B or better in this class. Why? Because for years and years I've slacked and now it's finally catching up to me: my GPA is ~2.5, and I need to convince the department head to let me into the accelerated master's program, or getting my master's degree will take two extra years instead of just one, despite the fact that all the evidence says I can't handle the course load.
I'm not even sure anyone will ever read this. But here it is. The anxiety is too high to ignore, so I'm responding to every single one of these blog posts.