Читать книгу How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson - Страница 10

What is the inner dialogue like when you procrastinate? If you try to bully or frighten yourself into working, that may work for a time – at least while the threat feels real and imminent – but what happens as soon as the threat dissipates? Often frightening yourself into working is only effective when the deadline is so close you can almost smell it. The snag is that this can create a cycle where you ignore the threat until it is – once again – the very last minute. Then the cycle starts all over again with your next piece of work.

One psychological concept that is relevant here is reactance. This has different meanings, one of which relates to ‘impedance in an AC circuit’, but here we are thinking of psychological reactance. Silvia (2005: 277) draws on Brehm (1966) in defining reactance as; ‘a motivational state aimed at restoring the threatened freedom’. In other words, if someone tells us we can’t do something – depending on how we relate to the person telling us – we may be more inclined to do it, so that we can assert the freedom which we feel is threatened. The message that you must do your essay now, even if it is coming from yourself or some ‘motivational’ slogan in font size 72, can work in a similar way – you can feel that it is a threat to your freedom to do all the other things you might want to do right now instead. So, one way of asserting your freedom is to do just what you feel you are being told not to do, just like people who deliberately walk on grass that they are told to keep off, or who speak in a silent study section of a library. Your defiant assertion of freedom is all the easier when the very same screen used for writing your essay can be the gateway to assert your hedonistic independence at two clicks, or three at most, and the essay is left behind as you are wafted up in a flight of fancy.

This is such a big factor in terms of writing – or not writing – essays, that we should stay with it for a moment longer. Before the temptation to flee proves too strong to resist, consider some ideas that might give us another perspective on our essay writing and our procrastination.