Kavli Affiliate: Ting Xu
| First 5 Authors: Zhiyi Chen, Zhiyi Chen, , ,
| Summary:
Procrastination represents one of the most prevalent behavioral problems
affecting individual health and societal productivity. Although it is often
conceptualized as a form of self-control failure, its underlying neurocognitive
mechanisms are poorly understood. A leading model posits that procrastination
arises from imbalanced competing motivations: the avoidance of negative task
aversiveness and the pursuit of positive task outcomes, yet this theoretical
framework has not fully validated in real-world settings and not applied
effectively to guide interventions. Here, we addressed this gap with a
preregistered, double-blind, randomized controlled trial. We applied seven
sessions of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS)
to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a key region for
self-control, in chronic procrastinators. Using the intensive experience
sampling method (iESM), we assessed the effect of anodal HD-tDCS on real-world
procrastination behavior at offline after-effect (2-day interval) and long-term
retention (6-month follow-up). We found that this neuromodulation produced a
lasting reduction in real-world procrastination, with effects sustained at a
6-month follow-up. While the intervention both decreased task aversiveness and
increased perceived task outcome value, causal mediation analysis revealed a
striking mechanism: the increase in task outcome value uniquely and
sufficiently mediated the entire behavioral improvement. In conclusion, these
findings provide causal evidence that enhancing DLPFC function mitigates
procrastination by selectively amplifying the valuation of future rewards, not
by simply reducing negative feelings about the task. This establishes a
precise, value-driven neurocognitive pathway for self-control and offers a
validated, theory-driven strategy for intervention.
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