Eveningness and procrastination: an exploration of relationships with mind wandering, sleep quality, self-control, and depression

Abstract

While morningness (a preference for rising earlier in the day) is associated with positive affect and life satisfaction, eveningness is correlated with negative emotionality, poor sleep, less self-control, and more procrastination. The current study investigated inter-relationships between morningness–eveningness; bedtime, academic, and exercise procrastination; mind wandering; sleep quality; self-control; and depressive symptoms. An online survey including questionnaire measures of these variables was completed by 306 university students (aged 18–51 years; mean = 20.36, SD = 4.001; 34 male). Morningness correlated with more self-control and better sleep quality—eveningness correlated with more bedtime, academic, and exercise procrastination; depressive symptoms; and mind wandering. All forms of procrastination negatively correlated with self-control and sleep quality, and positively correlated with depressive symptoms and mind wandering, although more strongly with spontaneous than deliberate mind wandering. Mediation effects were found—bedtime procrastination (BP) between eveningness and spontaneous mind wandering (MW); spontaneous MW between BP and sleep quality; sleep quality between BP and depressive symptoms; self-control between depressive symptoms and academic procrastination. A path model of these inter-relationships was developed. This study adds to a growing body of research indicating that interventions to reduce bedtime procrastination may bring about improvements in wellbeing and academic achievement