KONSTANZ, Germany, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- How people consider a task -- abstractly or concretely -- influences whether they procrastinate, researchers in Germany found.

Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz in Germany and colleagues handed out questionnaires to a group of students and asked them to respond by e-mail within three weeks on opening a bank account and keeping a diary.

Some students were told to think and write about what each activity implied about personal traits -- what kind of person has a bank account, for example.

Others wrote simply about the nuts and bolts of doing each activity -- speaking to a bank officer, filling out forms, making an initial deposit, etc. The idea was to get some students thinking abstractly and others concretely.

The psychologists recorded all the response times to see if there was a difference between the two groups.

The findings, reported in Psychological Science, found that even though all of the students were paid upon completion of the task, those who thought about the questions abstractly were much more likely to procrastinate, or not to get around to the assignment at all.

Those focused on the how, when and where of doing the task e-mailed their responses much sooner, suggesting they did not procrastinate.

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