The relationship between career stress and academic procrastination: Parallel multiple mediation effects of socially prescribed perfectionism and self-oriented perfectionism

This study aimed to examine the effects of career-related stress on academic procrastination and to explore the underlying psychological mechanisms of evaluative concern perfectionism and personal standards perfectionism through a parallel multiple mediation model. By doing so, the study sought to provide insights for university students to better understand the impact of their stress and behavioral patterns on academic performance, helping them move away from inefficient behaviors such as repeated task delay or self-criticism and to develop more realistic and sustainable academic habits. A total of 195 Korean university students were recruited through online communities, and the collected data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and PROCESS Macro 4.2. The main findings were as follows. First, career-related stress was positively associated with both types of perfectionism and academic procrastination. Second, the parallel multiple mediation analysis revealed that evaluative concern perfectionism mediated the relationship between career-related stress and academic procrastination in a positive direction, whereas personal standards perfectionism showed a negative mediating effect, indicating that the two types of perfectionism may offset each other in their influence on academic procrastination. Finally, the study discussed its limitations and provided suggestions for future research.