in 2005, a study conducted by angela chu and jin nam choi and published in the "journal of social psychology" intended to understand task performance among procrastinators with the definition of procrastination as the absence of self-regulated performance, from the 1977 work of ellis & knaus. in their study they identified two types of procrastination: the traditional procrastination which they denote as passive, and active procrastination where the person finds enjoyment of a goal-oriented activity only under pressure. the study calls this active procrastination positive procrastination, as it is a functioning state in a self-handicapping environment. in addition, it was observed that active procrastinators have more realistic perceptions of time and perceive more control over their time than passive procrastinators, which is considered a major differentiator between the two types. due to this observation, active procrastinators are much more similar to non-procrastinators as they have a better sense of purpose in their time use and possess efficient time-structuring behaviors. but surprisingly, active and passive procrastinators showed similar levels of academic performance. the population of the study was college students and the majority of the sample size were women and asian in origin. comparisons with chronic pathological procrastination traits were avoided.