Procrastination in teams

Naively present-biased agents are known to be severe procrastinators. In team settings, procrastination can represent a form of free-riding that, in excess, may jeopardize a team's ability to meet a deadline. Despite their reputations, we show how naivete and present bias can, in the right task environment, be desirable traits in a teammate that enable a team to optimize its performance while eliminating inefficient free-riding. These benefits emerge only from a more flexible specification (in comparison to existing models) as to how naive players reassess prior beliefs upon confronting present bias. By allowing the ‘depth' and ‘direction' of such reassessments to vary, our model links present-biased discounting theories to the recently-revived interest in modeling non-Bayesian reactions to null events, while offering a distinct approach reminiscent of level-k reasoning. Key themes from our analysis include the value of behavioral diversity, the opposite effects of ‘introspection' and ‘extrospection' on motivation, and that under- and over-thinking can both undermine efficiency