Longing Transforms into Delayed Action: The Progression of Postponement
In a groundbreaking study published in PNAS Nexus, researchers led by Ed O'Brien have uncovered a fascinating phenomenon that sheds light on why people often delay returning to enjoyable activities after a long break. The study, which is open access, suggests that the longer people perceive they've been away from something pleasurable, the more likely they are to postpone their return.
O'Brien's study found that the length of perceived time away from enjoyable activities increases the likelihood of voluntary delays in reengagement. This tendency can be understood as a form of temporal perception affecting motivation. When the interval away from an enjoyable activity feels longer, individuals may experience decreased urgency or increased reluctance to resume participation, leading to voluntary delay.
The study offers insights into delay behaviours such as procrastination. For instance, it helps explain a unique kind of procrastination - delaying joy, not avoiding effort. Participants in one experiment indicated that they wanted their first time back to be special as a reason for the voluntary delays in returning to favourite activities.
Interestingly, this effect was found to extend to COVID-19 contexts, regarding people's returns from lengthy shutdowns. The study suggests that time delays create psychological barriers to returning, which people self-impose. Unfortunately, the precise mechanisms were not detailed fully in the provided search results, but this likely relates to how humans estimate and value time intervals connected to reward and pleasure.
Increased perceived absence can diminish immediate motivation, promoting procrastination or delay in reengagement. For example, people may increasingly avoid contacting loved ones, getting back into rewarding hobbies, and so on, the longer it has been since last time, promoting vicious cycles of deferment.
In an experiment, fewer people who had not contacted a friend for a long time chose to contact the friend compared to those who had recently. This reluctance undermined their immediate happiness. Motivating people to return to experiences that would enhance their immediate happiness may be surprisingly difficult.
The study was conducted across five experiments with controlled parameters. It found that the study's findings were consistent across these experiments, providing strong evidence for the phenomenon. The study also suggests that helping participants reconstrue any chance to return as "extra special" can mitigate this effect.
In a survey, respondents who felt their time away from an activity had been long were more likely to delay return than participants who reported a short perceived time away. The study's findings highlight the importance of understanding this unique form of procrastination and developing strategies to help people return to joyful experiences more promptly.
- Neuroscience news regarding a study published in PNAS Nexus reveals that people tend to postpone their return to enjoyable activities due to a perceived longer absence, a phenomenon explained as a temporal perception affecting motivation.
- The study further explains that when an enjoyable activity feels like it's been absent for a long time, individuals may experience decreased urgency or increased reluctance to resume participation, leading to voluntary delay, a form of behavior understood as procrastination.
- Education-and-self-development and personal-growth articles could discuss this unique kind of procrastination, as it leads people to delay returning to favorite activities, even when they want their first time back to be special.
- Psychology experts have highlighted the importance of understanding this phenomenon, as it can create psychological barriers to returning that people self-impose, impacting relationships, lifestyle, and overall well-being.
