Productive procrastination: academic procrastination style predicts academic and alcohol outcomes.

Productive procrastination replaces one adaptive behavior with another adaptive-albeit less important-behavior (e.g., organizing notes instead of studying for an exam). We identified adaptive and maladaptive procrastination styles associated with academic and alcohol outcomes in 1106 college undergraduates. Cluster analysis identified five academic procrastination styles-non-procrastinators, academic productive procrastinators, non-academic productive procrastinators, non-academic procrastinators, and classic procrastinators. Procrastination style differentially predicted alcohol-related problems, cravings, risk of alcohol use disorders, and GPA (all ps < .01). Non-procrastination and academic productive procrastination were most adaptive overall; non-academic productive procrastination, non-academic procrastination, and classic procrastination were least adaptive. Productive procrastination differed from other procrastination strategies, and maladaptive procrastination styles may be a useful risk indicator for preventative and intervention efforts.

Harnessing the Undiscovered Resource of Student Research Projects.

This article suggests that undergraduate research can help advance the science of psychology. We introduce a hypothetical "question-list paradigm" as a mechanism to do this. Each year, thousands of undergraduate projects are completed as part of the educational experience. Although many of these studies may not contain sufficient contributions for publication, they provide a good test of the replicability of established findings across populations at different institutions and geographic locations. Thus, these projects could meet the needs of recent calls for increased replications of psychological studies while simultaneously benefiting the student researchers, their instructors, and the field in general.