Anxiety and self-control mediate the association between sleep quality and procrastination: Behavioral and neural...

Poor sleep quality is a prevalent issue linked to higher procrastination, which not only impairs academic and work functioning but also adversely affects mental and physical health. However, the psychological and neural basis underlying this association remain unclear. In this study, 1163 participants were initially assessed with self-report measures of sleep quality, procrastination, anxiety, and self-control and resting-state fMRI to examine the behavioral and neural correlates of the association between sleep quality and procrastination. After questionnaire and MRI quality control, 1079 participants were included in the final analyses. Elastic net regression revealed distinct functional connectivity patterns centered on the default mode network and prefrontal control regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex, which significantly predicted poorer sleep quality. Furthermore, parallel mediation analyses indicated that anxiety and self-control statistically mediated the association between sleep quality and procrastination, and that composite brain network strength also showed an indirect association with procrastination involving these same behavioral pathways. Integrating these behavioral and neuroimaging findings, our results indicate that poor sleep quality is associated with atypical patterns of connectivity within prefrontal and default mode systems, which may be consistent with the proposed role of diminished psychological resources in emotion regulation and executive control. Guided by the conservation of resources model, this multi-level framework provides an integrated perspective on the psychological and neural basis of the relationship between sleep quality and procrastination, thereby providing potentially relevant directions for future intervention research.