DELAY THAT'S IN OUR DNA

If your first impulse is to put off reading this column, your parents may be the reason.

But read it anyway, because impulsiveness and procrastination so often go hand in hand. In a new paper, researchers at the University of Colorado have found that each of the two traits is nearly half heritable, with no genetic factors unique to either trait alone. They go together, in other words, like peanut butter and jelly. (click below to read more)

The connection may sound counterintuitive, since at first blush impulsiveness seems like the opposite of procrastination. The former, after all, involves acting rashly, while the latter is about irrational delay. But previous research has found the two traits to be strongly correlated, and they do have something in common: deviation from a longer-term goal. Indeed, in this study two-thirds of the genetic variation in procrastination and impulsiveness was shared with variation in goal-management ability.

The study is based on surveys completed by 181 pairs of identical twins and 166 pairs of fraternal twins. Participants, whose average age was around 23, were given questionnaires aimed at gauging their propensity to procrastinate, be impulsive and fail to achieve goals. Twins are well suited for such studies because they usually shared an environment growing up. Since identical twins share all of their genes while fraternal twins share only half, genetic influences can be assessed by comparing how different identical twins are from one another as compared with fraternal twins.

From the standpoint of evolution, impulsiveness is thought to make sense, since the evolutionary environment offered many hazards and no refrigeration, savings accounts or other good ways of achieving long-range goals. The theory is that procrastination is a modern byproduct of impulsiveness, and the authors of this new paper write that their findings are consistent with that notion, even if they don't prove it.

"Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity and Goal-Management Ability: Implications for the Evolutionary Origin of Procrastination," Daniel E. Gustavson, Akira Miyake, John K. Hewitt and Naomi P. Friedman, Psychological Science (April 4)