A team of scientists sought to better define what constitutes patience and impatience and the factors that determine them.
Philosophers and religious scholars often refer to patience as a virtue, but most people claim to be impatient. This finding made researcher Kate Sweeny think about whether patience is related to the way we deal with everyday frustrations and sought to better define both concepts.
The expert concluded, after analyzing three studies with around 1200 participants, that impatience is the emotion that people feel when faced with a delay that seems unfair, unreasonable or inappropriate. Patience, in turn, is the way human beings deal with feelings of impatience.
According to , psychologists use the term “emotional regulation” to name the countless strategies people use to reduce (or sometimes increase) the intensity of their emotions.
According to Sweeny, patience is the subset of these strategies which particularly target feelings of impatience.
In studies carried out by the researcher, the team asked participants to consider their responses to various frustrating everyday situations, such as traffic, a long and boring meeting and a scenario in which they are trapped in a waiting room.
Volunteers had to indicate the degree of impatience they would feel in response to each of the scenarios and whether they would combat this impatience with strategies such as distraction, deep breathing or visualizing the positive side of the situation.
The results of the study identified three scenarios that create a “perfect storm” for impatience: when the risks are relatively high (traffic on the way to a concert, for example); when the waiting state is unpleasant (no chairs or distractions, for example); and when someone is clearly to blame for the delay.
The results also showed that volunteers felt more impatient when a delay was longer than anticipated, but not when the delay was relatively long or short.
It is certain that some people were more patient than others. Participants who felt more comfortable with open-ended situations and were more emotionally stable (i.e., low in need for closure and neuroticism) said they would not feel very impatient in these types of scenarios.
Those who had more emotional capabilities and were better at self-regulation said they would respond with more patience, even if they initially felt impatient. Furthermore, according to the study, being pleasant and have a lot of empathy also predicted patience.
“We still have a lot to learn, but our approach is very promising for helping people manage feelings of impatience and become more patient”, concluded the researcher.
The was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
