Prefrontal deficits in procrastinators: impaired impulse control or emotion-regulation difficulties

Abstract Prefrontal aberrations are robustly associated with high tendency to procrastinate, but cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying this link remain unknown. An impulse-control hypothesis predicts insufficient prefrontal regulation over reward-processing regions, leading failure to forgo immediate pleasure. While an emotion-regulation hypothesis predicts inadequate prefrontal regulation over emotion-processing systems, resulting in deficits to endure adversity. To investigate which hypothesis is more valid, the current study presented procrastinators with conflicts between pleasant distraction (photographs watching) and difficult-but-rewarding mission (dots counting) under fMRI scanning. The results favored the emotion-regulation hypothesis relative to the impulse-control hypothesis in three regards: (1) High procrastinators performed worse in the mission because of high task difficulty but not fun distraction. (2) Inadequate prefrontal regulation over emotional insular activities underlay failure in both persisting in the mission and resisting the distraction. (3) Trait procrastination correlated with regulatory prefrontal signals during persisting in the mission but not during resisting the distraction. These results indicate procrastinators suffer from emotion-regulation prefrontal deficits, and thus recommend emotional supports rather than criticism on them.