Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
A new study in Psychological Science reports a failure to replicate a highly influential 2002 paper on procrastination and deadlines. The authors of the replication suggest potential data irregularities in the original study, which has faced scrutiny amid broader academic integrity concerns.
Why it matters
This highlights the 'replication crisis' in social sciences, where foundational studies are being debunked, potentially impacting decades of academic and economic policy research.
A new paper in Psychological Science (. htm ) reports a failure to replicate Study 2 of Ariely and Wertenbroch’s influential article entitled, “Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment.” The original study, published in Psychological Science in 2002 ( .htm ), found that people performed better on a set of tasks when each task had its own externally imposed deadline than when people set their own deadlines or faced a single last-day deadline for all tasks. The paper has had a lasting influence. It has been assigned reading in many economics and psychology courses, and has more than 2,100 citations on Google Scholar.
Because this paper has been so influential, it is worthwhile to take a close look at the original study to try to understand why it did not replicate. We did that. This post – and the next one – is about what we found.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in