Thieves of time? Procrastination and the Dark Triad of personality

Procrastination shares many features with the Dark Triad of personality, such as high impulsivity and low conscientiousness. We investigated the Dark Triad of personality (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy) in relation to two types of procrastination styles (i.e., arousal and avoidance procrastination) in an on-line survey with 369 participants. We found that avoidance procrastination had a positive relationship with secondary psychopathy and the Entitlement/Exploitativeness facet of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Arousal procrastination, in turn, had a negative relationship with the Leadership/Authority facet. Possible reasons for the findings are discussed with a reference to fast and slow Life History strategies.