Waiting Makes People More Patient & Wiser, Research Finds

Lisa Franchi October 09, 2013

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Most of us hate waiting. It annoys many of us to wait for a couple of minutes before the customer service representative answers the phone, to get stuck in a traffic, fall in line in the bank, or to get caught in the long queue at the doctor’s office. But according to experts, waiting helps us build patience. What’s more, it also helps us make wiser decisions, especially when it comes to money.

Researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business conducted five experiments to test the benefits of waiting. In one experiment, participants were asked to sign up in online studies in exchange of getting a chance to win in a money lottery. They had to choose whether they wanted to be part of the lottery that involved winning $50 at a sooner date or that which involved winning $55 at a later date.

Participants were grouped into three. The first group were told that they could either wait for just 3 days to win $50, or wait for 23 days to win $55. The second group were told that they could wait 30 days to win $50, or 50 days for a chance to win $55. The third group was told they could wait 30 days to win $50 or 50 days to win $55, but they had to wait for several days before making a decision.

Among the first group, 31% decided to wait for extra time for bigger price of $55, whilst 56% of those in the second group decided to wait.  However, nearly all people in the third group, or 86%, decided to wait the extra time for the bigger reward. All in all, the third group have already waited for 27 days before making the decision to wait a little longer.

"When people wait, it makes them place a higher value on what they’re waiting for, and that higher value makes them more patient," said Ayelet Fishbach, the lead researcher. "They see more value in what they are waiting for because of a process psychologists call self-perception -- we learn what we want and prefer by assessing our own behaviour, much the same way we learn about others by observing how they behave."

She added that making people wait to make a decision can improve their patience because the process of waiting makes the reward for waiting seem ‘more valuable’.

Their findings were published in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes.

Source of this article:

Waiting Builds Patience -- And Leads To Smarter Decision-Making