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As the late, great Tom Petty once sang, ‘Waiting is the hardest part. ”According to his two recent papers, this applies as much to the consumer world as it does to everyday life. annabell robertsHe is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, where he studies internal negotiations that occur when people feel impatient, such as when waiting in a long line or waiting for an important announcement. .
Both papers investigate how the desire to close affects impatience. The first paper looks at how it affects decision-making. For example, choosing to complete a task now rather than later. The second explores people’s emotions while waiting and how the experience changes as the end of the wait approaches.
Mr. Roberts holds a Ph.D. He is a behavioral science major who is interested in how impatience affects people’s choices, such as whether to invest for the future or spend on something today.
Roberts said her research also offers lessons about what marketers can do to make wait times less annoying.
“We’ve all experienced being overly frustrated while waiting,” Roberts says.
Need for closure
In a paper, Roberts examines what causes impatience. Together with Alex Imus and Ayelet Fishback of the University of Chicago, she found her one answer. That is “closure”. According to Roberts, the need for closure influences intertemporal choices, that is, the relative value that people assign to today’s and future benefits.
In seven studies conducted online and in the lab, participants chose to either work faster or wait less to achieve the same results. Participants were willing to pay more or do more work if they could achieve a faster closing.
- They will pay $1 more if they can pay faster and feel less anxious about paying.
- They preferred to complete 15% more work for the same pay if they could finish the work faster and cross it off their to-do list.
- In order to forget about the report before the next vacation, they preferred to work an hour of unpaid overtime to finish the report rather than get paid to finish it after the vacation.
“The need to achieve goals helps explain the counterintuitive preference to work faster and pay faster,” Roberts said.
“It turns out that impatience isn’t just a short-sighted desire for reward. It’s also about taking goals off your list and not leaving them hanging.”
Roberts notes that the findings could be of interest to managers looking to motivate their teams, as people who want to quit are less likely to procrastinate.
The study also suggests why marketing promotions such as “buy now, pay later” deals sometimes don’t work, it adds, because consumers may not want the stress of knowing when a payment is due. Ta.
The end is near, but not yet enough
A previous study calculated how much Americans spend 37 billion hours Average spending for queuing and commuters over 1 year 42 hours per year I’m stuck in a traffic jam. In his second paper, also with Fischbach, Roberts tracked the emotional trajectory of that wait. Their study found that the pain of waiting increases as the waiting period draws to a close.
“This paper is about people’s emotions and experiences while they wait,” Roberts said.
“If you expect the wait to end quickly, you get even more impatient when you get closer to that expectation.”
In this study, in real-life situations, respondents rated their level of impatience while waiting for their first COVID-19 vaccine or for a bus to arrive in downtown Chicago. I understand that. Their frustration grew as the wait drew to a close. The closer I got to vaccinations or the closer the bus arrived, the worse I felt.
One group of respondents reported feeling anxious about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The levels of support for both Joe Biden and Donald Trump increased on Election Day.
The next day, the vote-counting process was still going on, so the impatience grew even more. Roberts noted that even though Biden was in the lead, approval ratings for both parties had increased.
“Even people who thought their candidate wasn’t going to win just wanted this to be over,” Roberts said.
“This is a great illustration of the desire to finish and how it plays out in the experience of waiting.”
For businesses, Roberts suggested that if there is uncertainty about when a package will be delivered, it’s better to let customers wait longer than shorter. That way you might arrive before they get impatient.
It’s also a good idea to let customers know about delays earlier than later, so they can adjust their expectations accordingly.
As a follow-up project, Roberts is researching useful interventions that can help people feel more patient with waiting times.
“I hope my research will help people manage their wait times,” Roberts said.
“A lot of people really want help on how to be more patient while they wait and how to make better choices, like saving for the future.”
“I can’t wait to pay: Desire to achieve goals increases impatience with costs.” Published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “Anxiety about the passage of time” Published in Social Psychology and Personality Science.
Image by Talal Hakim
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