Motivation and emotion/Book/2025/Fear of failure and procrastination 2

Fear of failure causing procrastination:
How does fear of failure reduce motivation and increase procrastination?

Overview

Figure 1. Person running Scenario Brooklyn is an athlete with an upcoming competition. She is feeling a lot of worry about the competition and doesn't believe she will win the competition. Brooklyn avoids training and believes that if she does not put effort in, then her lack of succeeding will be due to her lack of effort and not due to her lack of ability. She has lost her motivation and does not feel like she should not try due to believing she will not do well (see Figure 1).

Procrastination is a complex behaviour that is associated with negative consequences (Parlade, 2022), it is the intentional postponement or delay of a planned action (Duru et al., 2024). Fear of failure causes task avoidance especially in cases where the task is associated with heavy cognitive demand and going to be evaluated (Zm et al., 2011). The fear of failure has been long recognised as a primary reason for procrastination (Duru et al., 2024), however this chapter explores why this is a reason and how motivation is affected by fear of failure.

Focus questions What is fear of failure? What is procrastination? What is emotion regulation? Is there a relationship between fear of failure and procrastination?

What is fear of failure?

The fear of failure is the possibility of failing a task in the future (Parlade, 2022), especially in situations where the probability of success is low and the probability of being hurt by failure is high (Duru et al., 2024). This is a type of avoidance that depends on an individual's' performance or success (Ajrin Sudirman et al., 2023), which is the reaction to a provoking and intimidating outcome of a failure outbreak (Zarrin et al., 2020).

What could be the reasons for fear of failure?

There could be many reasons for an individual to have a fear of failure. Perfectionists may respond to a fear of failure by over-preparing and despite influencing burnout and emotional fatigue. Additionally, fear of failure can stem from childhood experiences, a learned trait I. Research shows that father and mothers were positive predictors for those with a fear of failure (Parlade, 2022).

What is procrastination?

Figure 2. Procrastination venn diagram

According to Parlade (2022), procrastination can be defined as an individual's voluntary attempt, through behavioural/overt or decisional/covert means, to delay a task one means to start or complete. It also includes postponing or delaying a task for a less important task (Salguero-Pazos & Reyes-de-Cózar, 2023). Studies have shown that increased anxiety, low conscientiousness and increased behavioural avoidance plays a role in procrastination (Parlade, 2022). There are many different types of procrastination, which are explained in the following table.

Table 1.

Different types of procrastination

Type of procrastination	Meaning of procrastination
Academic procrastination	An impairment in decision-making and in resolving conflicts when they decide whether to fulfil their needs or complete work (Salguero-Pazos & Reyes-de-Cózar, 2023).
Passive procrastination	A delay of a task despite knowing it should be completed, which is associated with discomfort (Parlade, 2022).
Active procrastination	A conscious decision to delay a task as a strategy and usually carried out by individuals who perform better under pressure (Parlade, 2022).
Rational procrastination	Delay of a task that will likely not need to be completed or has high costs associated with its completion in a timely manner (Parlade, 2022).
Task procrastination	Voluntary attempt to delay or avoid a specific task (Parlade, 2022).
Decisional procrastination	A delay in making significant and/or insignificant decisions in a timely manner (Parlade, 2022).

Note Keep in mind active procrastination and rational procrastination have similar function utility, where passive procrastination does not have functional utility (Parlade, 2022).

Syntax error

Passive procrastination is a conscious decision to delay a task as a strategy and is usually carried out by individuals who perform better under pressure:

Why does procrastination matter?

Procrastination is widely studied as it has many negative effects on psychological health and individual's performance. This is associated with stress, maladaptive coping styles, acute health problems, lack of health-supportive behaviours, low overall health satisfaction, insomnia, depression and fatigue. These are just some of the reasons why it is important to monitor and control the behaviours (Duru et al., 2023).

Emotion regulation

Emotion regulation is a factor involved in the relationship between the fear of failure and procrastination. This process involves an individual regulating and changing their emotional experiences and expressions to respond accordingly to the demands of their environment. This requires the individual to have the ability to control impulsive behaviour and the development of ability to apply these strategies. Individuals who exhibit greater impulsivity or weaker self-discipline may be more susceptible to procrastination, this satisfies the desire for a short-term mood elevation. Additionally, those with a fear of failure may become anxious and try to reduce this feeling by postponing work (Duru et al., 2024). Research supports the view of procrastination having a role in emotion regulation through individuals feeling negative emotions which delays approaching long-term goals instead favouring seeking short-term goals which are more immediately gratifying (Parlade, 2022).

Self-determination theory

Figure 3. Self-determination theory

Self-determination theory provides two constructs that play a mediating role, these are competence and autonomy (see Figure 3). The theory proposes that these two constructs are universal needs that are central to explaining human functioning and regulatory processes. Consistently satisfying competence results in high self-efficacy and perceived competence, and an ongoing satisfaction needs for competence and autonomy is assumed to enhance one's intrinsic motivation and one's active engagement with tasks. Contextual factors can facilitate or weaken the sense of autonomy and competence influencing motivational and behavioural outcomes resulting in behaviours such as avoidance, passivity, resistance and giving up. Those with a low-competence are likely to distract themselves with non-intended and less anxiety provoking activities, believing the consequences of failure are aversive and threatening, therefore feeling negative emotions. Finally, the cognitive and emotional components of fear of failure increase procrastination (Haghbin et al., 2012).

How does fear of failure relate to procrastination?

It has been suggested that those who procrastinate use their fear of failure as a means to protect themselves from negative evaluation (Zarrin et al., 2020). Those who are afraid of failure do not exhibit procrastination behaviours directly, but as they struggle in regulating their fear, therefore when subjects experience high fear of failure it increases their tendency to procrastinate (Zm et al., 2011). Some who cannot cope with anxiety and tension caused by their fear will try to get rid of these negative emotions by postponing their tasks and responsibilities when they have trouble regulating these emotions. This occurs particularly in cases where the probability of being hurt by failure is high and the probability of succeeding is low (Duru et al., 2024).

Interventions

It is important to find applications to monitor procrastination to minimise the negative effects that procrastination can have. Interventions based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are helpful.

ACT aims to address procrastination through mindfulness techniques (Parlade, 2022) and highlight the importance of improving an individual's overall openness and psychological flexibility by enhancing their ability to accept negative events or negative experiences (Wang et al., 2016). To handle procrastination, functional use of time, learning time management strategies, practical use of plans and strategies for a day and understanding the importance of determining goals can be useful. The psychological interventions are based on concepts of behavioural psychology that creates psychological flexibility by implying mindfulness and acceptable behavioural change processes. It uses six treatment processes acceptance, defusing, self as context, committed action, contact with present moment and values applied through use of different exercises (Kohli et al., 2022).

CBT has had the most impact compared to other strategies in reducing procrastination (Salguero-Pazos & Reyes-de-Cózar, 2023). The interventions to reduce procrastination should focus on addressing self-doubt and irrational beliefs. Helping individuals to develop more rational and adaptive beliefs may lead to decreases in procrastination behaviours, clinicians should focus on challenging evaluative irrational beliefs and fostering rational beliefs to cope with procrastination coming from self-doubt (Duru et al., 2023). Participants in CBT treatment stated they learned how to make use of creating study plans, other time management skills and how these techniques made them more confident in daily life (Wang et al., 2016). According to Kohli et al. (2022), people procrastinate due to solid cognitive structures, and CBT works by replacing the dysfunctional thoughts with rational thoughts.

Both of these are considerable short-term effects in reducing procrastination, how ACT had better long-term effects. CBT had stronger managing time and ACT had a larger effect in reducing negative effect (Kohli et al., 2022).

Applications: Students

Figure 4. Motivation for procrastination Scenario Brooklyn is a student in her first year of university. She is struggling to adapt to the university's pace of schoolwork and find motivation to continue her assessments (see Figure 4). She's starting to worry that she is not good enough for university and feels as if she should stop trying. As she gets more coursework, she allows it to pile up and has stopped completing her required assessments. Brooklyn believes postponing completing her work is a better decision than focusing on getting through the amount of work she has.

Procrastination is known to influence students. An increased fear of failure can lead to procrastination (Zm et al., 2011), leading to bad study habits, decreased motivation to study and poor grades (Ajrin Sudirman et al., 2023). This may have a detrimental effect leading to long-term stress, anxiety, guilt and regret which can have a severe impact on academic satisfaction (Duru et al., 2024). It is important to address this so students can have information to learn to address their maladaptive habits. Psychological sciences can help to address these issues by gaining a better understand of fear of failure, motivation and procrastination (Parlade, 2022), to be able to find management skills (Ajrin Sudirman et al., 2023).

Conclusion

Fear of failure can reduce motivation and lead to an increase in procrastination due to individuals trying to protect themselves from being hurt from negative evaluations (Zarrin et al., 2020). This causes individuals to avoid completing work to avoid facing the negative evaluation and blame failure on other issues like lack of effort (Parlade, 2022).

To recap

• Fear of failure is a type of avoidance that depends on whether an individual receives positive or negative feedback (Ajrin Sudirman et al., 2023).
• Procrastination is a voluntary decision to delay a task (Parlade, 2022), though there a multiple different types of procrastination.
• Particularly, academic procrastination refers to the delaying of starting or finishing a task as a result of low motivation (Zarrin et al., 2020).

Emotion regulation refers to being able to regulate and change emotional expressions to meet the demands of the environment (Duru et al., 2024). Individuals that struggle with this may exhibit greater impulsivity and struggle to manage the negative emotions related to the task and seek short-term mood elevation, procrastination (Duru et al., 2024).

Self-determination theory refers to a theory which involves competence and autonomy that describes that universal needs are central to explaining human functioning and regulatory processes. This has a role in fear of failure as a result of its cognitive and emotional components increasing procrastination (Haghbin et al., 2012).

Procrastination can have negative impacts like stress, maladaptive coping strategies, acute health problems, lack of health-supportive behaviours, low overall health satisfaction, insonia, depression and fatigue (Duru et al., 2023).

Though research aims to address this issue by researching how time management strategies (Salguero-Pazos & Reyes-de-Cózar, 2023), metacognitive strategies (Zarrin et al., 2020), cognitive behavioural therapy (Salguero-Pazos & Reyes-de-Cózar, 2023) and acceptance and commitment therapy (Parlade, 2022) can assist in lowering the amount of procrastination an individual partakes in.

Syntax error

ACT is:

Key takeaway Procrastination is used to avoid fear of failure to protect ourselves from negative evaluation, this is done by reducing motivation and not completing work. The reason for this is because we believe if we receive negative evaluation it is due to not putting in effort and instead not because we are not good enough.

Attempt to answer the focus questions What is fear of failure? What is procrastination? What is emotion regulation? Is there a relationship between fear of failure and procrastination?

See also

• Fear of failure (Book chapter, 2013)
• Motivation (Wikipedia)
• Avoidance motivation (Book chapter, 2011)
• Self-determination theory (Book chapter, 2011)
• Procrastination (Book chapter, 2010)

References

Ajrin Sudirman, S., Adnan Reza, F., Aisyiah Yusri, N., & Rina, R. (2023). Putting off until tomorrow: Academic procrastination, perfectionism, and fear of failure. International Journal of Islamic Educational Psychology, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.18196/ijiep.v4i1.17576

Duru, E., Balkis, M., & Duru, S. (2024). Fear of failure and academic satisfaction: The mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties and procrastination. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-024-00868-9Duru,

E., Murat Balkıs, & Duru, S. (2023). Procrastination among adults: The Role of self-doubt, fear of the negative evaluation, and irrational/rational beliefs. Journal of Evidence-Based Psychotherapies, 23(2), 79–97. https://doi.org/10.24193/jebp.2023.2.11

Haghbin, M., McCaffrey, A., & Pychyl, T. A. (2012). The complexity of the relation between fear of failure and procrastination. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 30(4), 249–263. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-012-0153-9

Kohli, M., Gupta, N., Saini, P., & Kohli, G. (2022). Comparison of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for treatment of academic procrastination. ECS Transactions, 107(1), 3321–3327. https://doi.org/10.1149/10701.3321ecst

Parlade, J. (2022). Fear of failure, mindfulness and procrastination. https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1488&context=etdSalguero

Pazos, M. R., & Reyes-de-Cózar, S. (2023). Interventions to reduce academic procrastination: a systematic review. International Journal of Educational Research, 121(102228), 102228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2023.102228

Wang, S., Zhou, Y., Yu, S., Ran, L.-W., Liu, X.-P., & Chen, Y.-F. (2016). Acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive–behavioral therapy as treatments for academic procrastination. Research on Social Work Practice, 27(1), 48–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731515577890Zarrin,

S., Gracia, E., & Paixão, M. (2020). Prediction of academic procrastination by fear of failure and self-regulation. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 20(3), 34–43. https://doi.org/10.12738/jestp.2020.3.003Zm,

L., Khairudin, R., Omar, F., Shahrazad Wan Sulaiman, W., & Wati Halim, F. (2011). Procrastination’s relation with fear of failure, competence expectancy and intrinsic motivation. Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 19, 123–127. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286869313_Procrastination

External links

• Emotion regulation (American Psychological Association)
• Emotion regulation (Psychology Today)
• How fear (especially of failure) and procrastination are connected and what to do about it (Solving Procrastination)
• How to overcome fear of failure (Nuthymia)
• How to overcome fear and procrastination (The University of Queensland)