Active procrastination incubates more creative thinking: The sequential mediating effect of personal mastery and creative self-concept

ABSTRACT

Many studies have suggested that procrastination can result in negative effects, such as anxiety and decline in academic performance; however, procrastination can be either active or passive. This study explored the serial mediation effect of personal mastery and creative self- concept in the correlation between active procrastination and creative thinking. A sample of 536 participants was asked to complete a series of questionnaires. The results demonstrated that creative self-concept played a mediating role in the correlation between active procrastination and creative thinking. Moreover, personal mastery and creative self-concept serially mediated the association between active procrastination and creative thinking. This study identified the critical factors associated with creative thinking and provided a reference for educators’ interventions for improving students’ creativity.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171065), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK202205022), the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (22XJC190001), the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi (2022JQ-156),the Shaanxi Provincial Research Project on Major Theoretical and Practical Issues in Philosophy and Social Sciences, and the Fundamental Research Funds For the Central Universities (XJS222001).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2023.2171721

Ethical statement

The study conformed to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 2013) and was approved by the Academic Committee of the Ministry of Education of Key Laboratory of Modern Teaching Technology, Shaanxi Normal University in China.