By John Salak –
People have been told for centuries that patience is a virtue. In fact, the proverbial phrase is one of seven heavenly virtues that supposedly date back to Psychomachia, an epic poem from the Fifth Century AD.
Now researchers from the University of California— Riverside aren’t so sure that patience is all it’s cracked up to be. It may simply be a coping mechanism. The team’s findings may ultimately help people better cope with the related anxiety.
“Philosophers and religious scholars call patience a virtue, yet most people claim to be impatient,” explained UC-Riverside psychology researcher Kate Sweeny. “That made me wonder if maybe patience is less about being a good person and more about how we deal with day-to-day frustrations.”
Getting to the bottom of the issue required Sweeny to better define what constitutes patience, impatience and the factors that determine them. Relying on data from three studies involved 1,200 people, she concluded that impatience is the emotion people feel when they face a delay that seems unfair, unreasonable or inappropriate. This might involve, for example, a traffic jam outside of rush hour or a meeting that extended beyond its allotted time.
In comparison, patience is how people cope with those feelings of impatience.
Psychologists use the term “emotion regulation” to capture the many strategies people use to reduce or sometimes increase the intensity of their emotions. Patience is the subset of these strategies that particularly target feelings of impatience, Sweeney added.
The studies asked participants to consider their responses to various frustrating situations they might encounter in everyday life. One depicted a traffic jam, another described a long, boring meeting and others prompted them to imagine being stuck in a waiting room.
Participants indicated how impatient they would feel in response to each, then whether they would counter their impatience through strategies like distraction, deep breathing or seeing the upsides of the situation.
The results identified three scenarios that create a “perfect storm” for impatience. These involved when the stakes are relatively high, such as heavy traffic on the way to a desired concert; when waiting is unpleasant, such as no seats or no distractions at the DMV; and when someone is clearly to blame for a delay. Participants also felt more impatient when a delay was longer than they anticipated—but surprisingly, not when the delay was relatively long or short.
While all participants were impatient by these delays, some were more comfortable with open-ended situations. The individuals profiled as more emotionally stable as measured by the minimal need for closure and neuroticism and those who were more emotionally skilled and better at self-regulation. Being agreeable and high in empathy also predicted patience.
“Our initial findings support many of our ideas about patience and impatience,” Sweeny concluded. “We still have a lot to learn, but our approach is quite promising in terms of helping people to manage feelings of impatience and ultimately become more patient in their daily lives.”
