Investigating the Role of Self- Compassion on Academic Procrastination by Mediating Role of Experimental Avoidance in Students of Yazd University

One of challenges that students face with is academic procrastination. It means “delay in performing a task”. Since academic procrastination could affect various aspects of students' personal and social life, by identifying related factors, steps can be taken toward reducing or eliminating it. This study aimed at determination the role of self- compassion on academic procrastination by mediating role of experimental avoidance in students of Yazd University. The research design was descriptive-correlational. The participants of this study were 375 (208 girls and 167 boys) undergraduate students of Yazd University in the academic year 2018-19, that were selected on the basis of random cluster sampling. Data were collected by academic procrastination questionnaire (Solomon & Rothblum, 1984), self-compassion questionnaire (Neff, 2003) and acceptance and practice questionnaire (Bond and et al, 2011). Data analysis was performed by using correlation method based on structural equation modeling approach using AMOS software version 24. The results showed that compassion predicts directly, negatively and significantly, experiential avoidance (β = -0.69) and academic procrastination (β = -0.33). Experiential avoidance also directly, positively, and significantly predicts academic procrastination (β = 0.24). Finally, the results showed that experiential avoidance plays a mediating role in the relationship between self-compassion and academic procrastination. Therefore, it can be concluded that by increasing self-compassion and psychology flexibility (reducing experiential avoidance) students' academic procrastination can be to some extent reduced.