An agent-based model of procrastination

Ruurdje Procee, Bart A. Kamphorst, Arlette van Wissen, John Jules Meyer

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Procrastination is a widespread type of self-regulation failure that can have serious negative effects on people's health (e.g., because people delay or omit important health behaviors) and well-being. New 'e-coaching' technologies make it possible in principle to offer tailored support to individuals in their efforts to change their self-undermining behavior. In practice, however, such automated support is currently unfeasible because the causal mechanisms behind procrastination are complex and poorly understood. This paper presents a new agent-based model of procrastination that integrates insights from economic models about the dynamics of procrastination with psychological concepts that can help explain the behavior on an individual level. The model is validated by using 5-fold cross validation with simulated annealing to fit and test the parameters on an existing dataset on academic procrastination (n=293). Results show that the agent displays realistic behavior and that the model with the fitted parameters performs significantly better (p<0.01) than the model with randomly selected parameters.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationECAI 2014 - 21st European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Including Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems, PAIS 2014, Proceedings
PublisherIOS Press
Pages747-752
Number of pages6
Volume263
ISBN (Electronic)9781614994183
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Event21st European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2014 - Prague, Czech Republic
Duration: 18 Aug 201422 Aug 2014

Publication series

NameFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
Volume263
ISSN (Print)09226389

Conference

Conference21st European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2014
Country/TerritoryCzech Republic
CityPrague
Period18/08/1422/08/14

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