The Waiting, Part 3

say in Great Britain. Uh. And there was a thing I wanted to start off with today, which was following up on study I brought up in the previous episode because there was another thing about it that I found really interesting and I forgot to mention last time. Uh. So, Rob, you remember last time we talked about the Stanley Milgram

experiments with line cutting in the nineteen eighties. Yes, Stanley Milgram sending his um his agents out into the world to cause havoc in the lines, to disrupt lines and uh and so discord for the purposes of his studies. Yes, roving bands of actors to go throughout the city of New York and cut lines all over the place just to see what happened. Uh. And it's mentioned in the study that the main types of locations, the ones that are named are train stations and betting parlors. So cool um.

But but anyway. The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology N. Six. It was by Mill Gram, Hillary J. Liberty, Raymond Toledo, and Joyce Wackenhut and was called Response to Intrusion into Waiting Lines. Uh. And so to quickly review some of the main things they found. They found that obviously people did not like when somebody cut in line in front of them, but most of the time the line cutter basically got away

with it. I went back to check the exact numbers and across all of the different conditions, about twenty two percent of the time people attempted to eject then jumper through verbal objections. They might yell at them or tell them to go to the back of the line and so forth. Uh. And then about ten percent of the time they would somehow physically interact with the line cutter.

And this could range from you know, aggressively tapping them on the shoulder or tugging the sleeves saying like, hey, you know, what are you doing to actually grabbing or shoving them out of the line. That was about ten percent of the time, But you might hear from those numbers that the majority of the time the line cutter basically got in, you know, got away with, maybe not

more than just hostile stairs. Yeah, I mean it makes you realize that part of it is just how susceptible are you too, I guess social cues, but also just the the ravages of social shaming, Like if you are completely unashamed, then you can probably get yourself right to the front of the line a lot of the time. Yeah, but the question is how many people are that shameless that That's one of the main things I want to come back to you here now. Just to mention a

couple of other things. One of the other things they found was not surprisingly, people behind the line cutter were more likely to object than people in front of them. And the other thing they found was that you could really put a damper on the overall reaction to line

cutting by inserting what the authors called buffers. And these would be other actors, other experiment ers posing as normal rule following line standards who do not react when the line intrusion occurs, so you just have another experiment or stand in the line, and then the line cutter comes and cuts right in front of them, and they don't react.

They just stand there passively. People in the rest of the line are also much less likely to react when there's somebody like that there, which indicates that we tend to look to other people for clues about how best to react when we see an apparent violation of q justice, and we especially look to the person directly behind the intrusion. The person directly behind the line cutter has this special obligation to object, and if they don't, other people in

the line are much less likely to speak up. But anyway, I realized that there were actually a few other interesting things about the study that I didn't get to in the last episode, and I wanted to bring them up now.

And one is again a demonstration of the profundity of the sense of norms governing queuing, demonstrated by the fact that despite people getting away with line cutting most of the time without major objections from the line, the actors who had to carry out these experiments were absolutely mortified by what they were doing to such an extent that the authors had to to like include a section of their right up describing the reactions of the experimenters themselves,

And I just want to read from this. The several experimental confederates reported highly negative affect associated with the task of intruding into lines. Before each trial, many of the confederates procrastinated at length, often pacing nervously near the target area, spending as much as half an hour working up the nerve to in rude. For some, the anticipation of intruding was so unpleasant that physical symptoms such as pallor and

nausea accompanied intrusions. Reactions of this type have been reported previously by Garfinkel and Milgrim and sabini Uh. They constitute the quote inhibitory anxiety that ordinarily prevents individuals from breaching social norms, and indicate that the internal restraints against intruding into lines play a significant role in assuring the integrity of the line. So again, just a powerful demonstration of the profundity of the line cutting taboo, at least in

you know, New York in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, I mean this makes sense. I know I've been in the situation where I'll get to the front of the line, and there'll be something out the line, like I need to go get enough exchange a package or something, you know, to exchange one product for another, and the cashier will tell me, we'll just come back up to the front

of the line when you get this taken care of. Which, on one level, okay, I have the permission of the teller or you know whoever the individual of of semi power is in the scenario. But I also know that the people behind me may not have that information, especially if I'm gone long enough for one or two people to cycle through. Like, how are they supposed to know that I am I'm not a line cutter, And I can't help but be anxious about that. I know exactly

what you're talking about. Yeah, Like the fear that, even if you have a legitimate excuse, just the fear of the appearance of not having a legitimate excuse is terrifying. Right, You feel like you need to announce yourself when you get back in and like loudly proclaim that you're not cutting in line. You're supposed to do it as if

you're in a Tim Robinson sketch. I'm supposed to be doing this, But so another really interesting question here in the Milgram study is that despite the fact that the taboo on cutting in line is so strong, people often tended to get away with it. Nonetheless, only in a minority of cases did the line actually ban together to

verbally or physically try to eject the intruder. Rather, as we mentioned last time, the defense of the qu integrity was primarily local rather than systemic, and it depends heavily on the behavior of the person directly behind the line cutter.

So the question is why is this, Like the fear of cutting in line is so strong that it makes a person who's about to do it for the sake of a scientific experiment go pace in the lobby for half an hour and maybe like nearly vomiting a garbage can, And yet the majority of the time the line can't get it together to defend itself against a cheater. You know that those two things would seem to be kind

of in contradiction with each other. What's going on here? Well, Milgram and co authors had some ideas about this, which they lay out in their discussion section. I thought these were interesting, so I wanted to go through them. One of them is that most natural lines are composed people who are strangers to each other, leading to a general

reticence in social engagement. Here, and they hypothesized that lines composed of people familiar to one another might be much more likely to act in a unified defensive way more effectively. But the other thing they point out here that I thought was really interesting was about the actual spatial arrangement of the line. So when you have people lined up in a normal American style queue for something, everybody's facing the same direction and thus no person is facing anyone else.

And they argue that this actually discourages group cooperation. So like if the people in the line could look at each other's faces more easily and see how everybody else was reacting more easily, unified defensive action might be more common. This makes sense because I have I when I am in the line for security at the airport. You the way that the line is typically arranged. You know, it's snaking back and forth. You're going to be facing sometimes

you know two different rows of people that are facing you. Uh, you may make eye contact with them, or at least you'll see their face. And it is this this situation where you're forced to acknowledge on some level of the humanity of all the other people in line. You know, it's I'm not saying it's a real icebreaker of a

of a of an environment. You know, you don't feel like you're bonding at the soul level with all of these people, but but I could see where Yeah, this is a more humanizing experience than just simply standing, um, you know, in line, one after the other, just looking at the back of everybody's head. I know the experience

you're talking about. Yeah, so a a snaking serpentine line may be different than a single file or I mean, I guess they're both single file than a straight line that doesn't have any angles where you can look back at other line standards. Another thing cutting against people's defense of the queue as a whole might be that mounting a systemic attack against an intruder in the line. So if that's going to involve you, like approach sing them or something like that, that might cause people to lose

their own place in line. So when you're standing in line, you're very concerned with like making sure that the people around you know where your place in the line is and not leaving that place and leading to any confusion or perhaps forfeiting the time you've already spent waiting, so you're you're more likely to just keep your head down and not get into situations that could cause disruption of the line system and in keeping without the third issue

that milgraman co author's raises the right quote, A system's resilience depends not only on its capacity to defend against disturbances, but also its capacity to ignore, adjust to, and tolerate them. Although confrontation with the intruder would serve to maintain the physical order of the line, it may risk the escalation of a localized incident into a general freacas, threatening the

disintegration of the entire system. By not challenging the intruder, a cue may protect the system against the hearance of disorder. As Schwartz has written, and this was from a paper in nineteen quote, the chaotic dissolution of the que can be forestalled not only by the default of deviance, but

also by its contingent toleration. This is great. This lines up with some of the stuff we were talking about last time, like to what extent is it worth it to confront a single or even a couple of of line breakers if it is going to potentially escalate things to the point where saying nobody gets that bagel sandwich that you're waiting in line for, or you don't get the bagel sandwich because you are going to jail. Uh that sort of thing. Uh. So, yeah, you don't, you don't.

You can't be so um uh you know, married to the idea that the line must not be broken, because then otherwise the line could just fall into chaos and then once more you're in Tim Robinson sketch instead of functioning line. Right, I was trying to think of a comparison. It almost makes me think, like, um, imagine you're you're playing Monopoly with a number of friends and you're all

high and out having a good time. I think maybe you're a Monopoly hater, but whatever, whatever, somebody, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that you were enjoying Monopoly. Uh, and you you're having a great time. Everybody's playing the game, and you happen to notice another character cheats another character, Like they reach into the bank and they lift out a hundred and they tuck it under and nobody else sees.

Do you bring it up? Because on one hand, you don't like cheating, that that's undercutting the spirit of the game. But on the other hand, if you bring it up, you're gonna ruin the whole game, Like nobody's having fun after that point. Yeah, I don't. I would argue that that is in keeping with monopoly experience. You need to reach that point where nobody's having fun anymore and relationships are ruined. But um, but no, I think I think that's Seriously, I think that that's that's a that's a

fair comparison. Um, this probably isn't as good of an example, but I was thinking maybe perhaps of playing Dungeons and Dragons, like what happens you're the dungeon master or you're the player, and you realize you forgot to apply a certain well, maybe you had an extra attack, you could have made a couple of rounds ago or there. The monster had some other extra like a legendary effect that it could

have utilized, and you forgot to do it. You've got to be willing to roll with the fact that, Okay, we didn't do that, but but we can't if we go back in time, if we try and backtrack, we're going to disrupt the experience, We're going to derail the train to some extent, and you just have to keep moving forward. Right, Sometimes you just have to incorporate and tolerate a single malfunction in the system in order to not risk stopping the progress of the system in a

way that would completely derail it. Right. And then they got a fourth point that I also thought was really interesting. They argue that allowing the intruder to remain in line serves the system in another way, namely co opting those who are a threat to its survival. Once an intruder is part of the line, she or he has an investment in its continued existence. Okay, that's kind of kind

of true. I can see that. So that means is that basically saying, well, okay, the person who just cut in line, they think the rules don't apply to them. But it's not like they don't think the rules apply to anyone. They might be the type to to tell someone else not to cut and to enforce the rules to some extent, or at least agree with the rules, like you can't. I guess the thing is, you can't exploit a system if you completely disregard all aspects of

the system, that's true. I mean, once they have cut in line successfully, now they've got a stake in maintaining the line, and you'd rather maintain the line and get out of there than have everything to send into chaos. And it is kind of like that realization that the line is not just about me getting my bagel sandwich, it's about everybody being able to get a bagel sandwich in uh, you know, a reasonable amount of time in

in a in an effective manner. Yeah. And and this also really gets to something we talked about in the last episode, and we'll be backed up by by more stuff we look at in this episode, which is that by and large, studies find that people do regard queuing in lines not just as a an economic proposal where

people are trying to maximize their own self interested value, right. Instead, people are regarding them more like a social system that has norms, and it has a kind of code to it, and it has roles within it, and there's a general interest in maintaining the integrity of the social system, whether or not it personally directly benefits you. So anyway, I mean, I thought that was interesting about this stuff. In the conclusion of the Millgram study here because it's finding that

a que is like a social system. It's got these norms and roles, and the there is extremely strong internal pressure to obey these norms. But the inherent physical and social mechanics of the single file line sometimes work against the line's ability to defend itself systematically. And then I wanted to read one more thing that I thought was interesting. For their their conclusion, they write, quote, what is the main bonding mechanism of the queue? It resides in replicated segments.

The principal focus for each person in line is the space between himself or herself and the person standing just in front. This is the space the quere will defend most vigorously. If the quere is to defend the line at all, A willingness to object to intrusions quickly attenuates with positions further down the line. The que will hold together if each member defends the space immediately in front, which the qure often experiences as a zone of special responsibility.

The queue is thus articulated through a series of overlapping zones, each centering on the individual standing in line and extending a few removes forward and a remove behind. The queue is segmental in structure, and as often occurs in systems of linear composition. Segmental structures are particularly likely to arise in short lived systems formed through accretion of their constituent units,

as in the case of waiting lines. So a line is both a coherent social system that has incentives for defending its integrity from end to end, but in practice it is modular in nature. It's built out of an assembly of smaller social units with their own local responsibilities, and that this is characteristic of many types of self

organizing structures that people come up with. When you don't have a top down mandate for how something should be organized, you you tend to get a kind of modular structure like this with lots of little local rules of enforcement. And it also makes me think about other ways that social systems premised on a kind of holistic sense of

of coherence also rely on strong local modules. Like I think about the the tendency of militaries to really put emphasis on the relationship between each member and their direct superior you know, kind of like the space right in front of you in line, as opposed to being overly concerned about what's going on too far or below your rank. Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking about this. So I think that the role of various units in a much larger force. Thankank, Thank.

Before we leave the subject of line cutting, I also wanted to talk about a study I came across that concerns line cutting that I found positively heartwarming. Is again, no, it is not. It's one that that starts off sounding like it's going to be kind of grim and mean, but actually is heartwarming in the end, or at least

a possible interpretation of it is. Uh So, the next study I wanted to talk about is by Felix Oberholzer G and it was published in Kick Close in I think two thousand three, or perhaps republished in two thousand and six. But anyway, it's called a market for time fairness and efficiency and waiting lines. And so this takes an economic look at ed waiting in line and the author here writes in the abstract quote in situations of excess demand, many firms use waiting lists to allocate products

and services among their customers. The resulting allocation is likely to be inefficient, creating opportunities for parado improving trades among those who are waiting in line. So a note about parado. So parado efficiency is a concept that you will sometimes hear invoked by economists. Basically, parado means gains without compensating losses.

So a parado improvement is when you take some initial situation and you change it so that at least one person in it is better off and nobody is worse off. So anywhere in any system that you can find opportunities for parado improvements, that's a good thing. Basically it means wins without compensating losses. So that would be for instance, if there was a rule against wearing a hat in the office, and nobody in the office had really thought about this, but one person really to where I hat

in the office. You know, if you can change that rule and it doesn't offend anybody, and that one person gets to where a hat in the office, then they're good to go. Like that is a parado improvement. Yes, yes, exactly. Or you can often think about parado improvements in types of trades of things, or even in in giving, even in exchanges of goods, even if you're not being compensated. One example, I was trying to think of an example.

Here's one I thought of all right. Let's say we're both sitting in a waiting room, we're both bored, and I pick up two books from the table beside me. One is written in English, which I read, and the other is written in Spanish, which I do not read. And let's say you, the person sitting next to me, you are also bored. You would also like some reading

material you have none, and you do read Spanish. It would be a parado improvement for me to just hand over the book that's in Spanish to you, right, because you are getting something out of it, but it is of no use whatsoever to me. It is a gain for you at no loss to me. Yeah, that makes sense.

And they're also basically any good situation of economic barter where where both parties are are fully satisfied with the deal or those can be characterized by parado improvements as well, you know the classic like I have more apples than I can use, you have more milk than you can use. We trade some with each other, we can both feel like we're better off than we started. And so the author here is trying to apply this parado improvement thing

to the queuing context. So they say, in the queuing context, the trading of places is rare, and inefficiencies often persist over time. So, for example, you might have a situation where I'm really short on time, and it would be very valuable to me to pay a fee to skip to the head of the line, maybe to pay everybody in line to skip ahead of them. And in some situations, other people who are waiting in line, who are not particularly in a rush, might prefer to take my money

and wait a little bit longer. And yet while there are forms of this, I was thinking about how you don't see this happening much in many like wild type queuing scenarios, and when you do, it's usually not paying the other people waiting in line. Instead, you'd probably like pay the the service provider or the store rather than the other people, so they're just waiting longer and getting

nothing in return. Yeah, Like at the airport, it's totally understood that yes, some people paid extra so they get to go on first, and some people may may take some sort of like a flight credit in return for changing their flights around that sort of thing. But so this study wanted to look at what happens if you directly offer incentives to the other people waiting too, people waiting in line, So you offer to pay people if you can cut in front of them. How do people

react to that? So to test people's reactions, the author here tried it out with several volunteers. He staged experiments in the following location. So it was a cafeteria at the University of Pennsylvania, a food court in the vicinity of the university, and Amtrak train station, and a Department of Motor Vehicle service center in Philadelphia. And so the experiment goes like this. You are standing in line, you are close to the front of the line, and somebody walks up to you and says, can I go in

front of you? And then from here you get one of five different conditions. Either they simply ask you that and they offer you nothing, or in the other four, they hold out a varying sum of cash in their hand and offer to pay it to you to let them cut in front of you. So this would be

one dollar, three dollars, five dollars, and ten dollars. And the author does note that the wait times in these scenarios were generally low, averaging less than three minutes or so, so it seems like the money should be a pretty good trade. Like, you know, if somebody says, hey, I'll give you ten dollars to wait an additional one to two minutes or something, I mean, that's that seems like

a good deal. I mean, especially if you're waiting on that that bagel sandwich like that, that will probably cover the cost of the bagel sandwich, at least a large part of it. So there are three principal findings here. First of all, the compensation does have the expected effect. People who were offered more money were more likely to let someone cut in front of them, and the more generous to offer, the more likely people were to accept it, So ten dollars was the most likely to get you

a spot in the line. But second, here's the really counterintuitive part. Most people in the experiment actually rejected the money. So most of the people who let the experiment or cut ahead of them said no, it's okay, you can keep the money. As some took it, but the majority

would not take it. I mean, I guess I would be at least heavily tempted not to take it, just on just because it's weird, you know, like I was talking earlier about, Like there's the there's the desire to get to the front of the line in a reasonable amount of time, to not have people cut in front of you, but also to not have weird interactions with people. And if somebody's offering you three to ten dollars to get ahead of you in line, like it's gotten weird.

It's already weird. Yeah, I feel the same like I. Once I read this result, I started to think, oh, yeah, that that does seemed like how I would probably react. I would probably be like, yeah, okay, you can go. No, I don't need the money, it's okay. Uh. And the interesting thing was that these two principles hold true at the same time, so people the more people offered to pay, the more likely people were to say, yeah, you can get in front of me, even when the people wouldn't

take the money. So the increasing price made a difference even though people weren't taking it. I wonder what the study would have been like if they also included offers of like someone coming up and saying, I will I will give you this toad if you let me get in front of you in line, you know, because it would probably be the similar thing where if someone just came up and asked from a place in line, I might say, I'm sorry, and I think you should get

to the back and just wait. Maybe I would say that, and I don't know, but if someone came up and they were offering me the toad, I would not take the toad for various reasons. But but also I might just say, yeah, go ahead, Like, if you're willing to put yourself out there and offer me a live toad for this place in line, then I think you should have it because you want it more than I think.

That's a reasonable interpretation. So I just want to read a couple of passages from overholdzer g here about how how to read what happened in the study uh. The author writes, quote prices play an unusual role in these exchanges.

In economic theory, prices are indicators of scarcity, and they compensate producers for the cost of making desired products available and then a little bit later in the market for time studied in this paper, However, prices do not serve a compensating function, possibly because individuals view it as unfair to exploit a situation of excess demand. In other words, people have resistance to gouging or to exploiting a situation where somebody appears to really need something and then picking

up at the same time. Most individuals act as if they were compensated, accepting price signals as indicators of scarcity and trading time when the welfare gains for doing so appear particularly large. Um. So, so this is an interesting contradiction. Again, Why does the money make a difference even if people feel social pressure not to exploit the demand for time? Essentially, if people feel a moral compunction not to que gouge.

And I think a reasonable interpretation here one that's been offered is that maybe the amount of money is a signal of the intruder or the desire of the or the potential intruders desperation. The fact that they're offering to pay more money is a sign that they really need to get through whatever this is more quickly. Yeah. I like to come back to our bathroom example. If someone comes up to you, it's like, I will give you a thousand dollars if you will let me go into

this bathroom stall ahead of you. You know that it sounds like they really need to go. Yeah, yeah, so I think this is interesting. What could have been just to study about people's monetary self interest and desire for cash actually might be a demonstration of something else. It could be pointing to a kind of widespread jen a role sensitivity to other people who appear to be in some kind of stress or crisis. Yeah, so I don't know that kind of that kind of put the bellows

in the heart furnace for me. But anyway, I want to see all kinds of follow ups on this, going with your idea offering things other than money, going up to people near the front of the line at the DMV and saying, hey, can I cut in front of you if I give you a live chicken. I've got one other thing though that that was hovering in my mind thinking about this, which is the role of uh,

the other people in line. So if you're letting somebody cut in front of you, you're also letting that person cut in front of everybody behind you, right, And so I would feel a kind of pressure about that that maybe just wouldn't be like oh, I want to get out of here faster, but also a social pressure from the rest of the line thinking like oh, you know, I don't want them to judge me. Yeah, yeah, like they're not offering me a toad or me a dollar

I had. I was standing in a line several weeks ago, and it was it was a hot day, and we were waiting in line for um, like a a shave ice, and it I had this kind of insane thought that I was probably caused by the heat, where I was like, why aren't we all standing in line to each get a shave ice. Why don't we just all put together a single order and have one person place the order for all the shave ice that we need? Um? And

then I realized that that was that was ludicrous. Uh yeah, and also underlines again why we have the line to begin with. Even though it's it's it can be annoying. It can be hot in the line. Uh and it can you can have delusional thoughts as the sun beats into your scalp. But at the same time, it's better than trying things like that. I thought you were gonna say, why don't we all band together, knock over the shave ice stand and just grab the ice for ourselves and run.

That's like the next level of breaking it down, right, I mean, yeah, We're all going to just place a mass order together and just totally overwhelm this place, then why not just physically overwhelm it and just just everything just collapses into chaos and nobody really gets a shave ice. Maybe some people like just get a handful of syrup or some plain ice, that sort of thing. Oh that's right, I guess, because you can't abscond with the labor of

the shave ice maker, right right. It's not like they have them just all pre made back there right now. One interesting aspect of waiting in line is, of course, how the experience plays with the relativity of time. And I don't think we have to explain the experience of time as a relative thing all that much. I mean, the basic is always time flies when you're having fun, and the reverse of that is that time can almost stand still when you're not having fun. Standing in line

is often brought up as an example of this. Sure though, it is interesting to how meditative activities can sometimes feel like either of these examples. You know, you can either sort of interesttate where you don't realize that time is fasting, is passing as fast as it is even if things not something you would define as fun, and other times attempting to meditate or engage in some sort of meditative activity can really feel like it's it's bringing the nowness

down to a crawl. You know. Another important distinction here is the difference between how long time feels in the moment versus how long it feels in retrospect, right, which is something we've talked about before. I assume you're mainly emphasizing how it feels in the moment. Yeah, So I wanted to look at how standing in line affects the

individual's perception of the flow of time. So I looked at the paper time Flow How Consumption Practices Shape consumers temporal Experiences by Nicholas Warman and Junas Roca, published two thousand fifteen in the Journal of Consumer Research. Time flow is that one of the sequels to time cop Uh No, it could be though, right. Um. Anyway, the researchers wanted

to see how different factors impacted this perception of time. Now, instead of studying people waiting in line for a bagel sandwich, they looked at waiting in line to play paintball and in to engage in extreme free skiing. Uh. These are both activities. They write the detail a lot of waiting followed by intense bursts of activity. Oh, that's interesting. So they're they're not just waiting to like get a product or a service, They're waiting for some kind of extremely

stimulating experience. Right, So you know this this is certainly a particular look at waiting that you know, may not seem as relatable to some of the other examples we've talked about. But but I still think it's very interesting because they ultimately identified five elements that they think need to be in place for consumers to experience a balanced

flow of time. So I'm just gonna roll through them here and just summarize them first, bodily routines and skills, and so they compare this to yoga and quote one of the most gripping temporal experiences for example, but follows us when we have to hold our breath. So this basically comes down to what is the body doing while it's waiting uh? Next plans and moods? So is the person waiting uh in line or otherwise fixed on a particular game plan, of course or course of action? What

happens when you get to the front. And I found this very interesting thinking again about waiting in line for the like the the t s A for air airline security, because when I'm at least my experience is when I'm waiting in line, I'm not just gazing off into the middle distance anticipating finally getting done with this. I'm thinking about that crunch point towards the front. Am I going to have both my passport and my son's out in time? Am I going to have them facing the right way?

Am I going to have the things that need to go separately from my body through the check or those arranged? I like all this stuff rushing through my head, and I'm probably freaking out a little bit about it because I'm nervous about getting in trouble with the t s A agent because I don't have the right thing lined up. So I feel like that's a situation where, especially towards I get closer to the front of the line, line UH, time is always feels like it's moving too fast rather

than too slow for me. Yeah, they call these the teleo effective structures. Yes, the UH And this is for a much more basic question. This just makes me wonder how waiting in line is different when you're waiting in line for something you want to do versus something that you don't want to do but have to do. Yes, okay. The next the third thing they identified rules and regulations the effects of formalized temporal framing of a practice. So that's just like how long will this take? How long

is it is it expected to take? Um? You know, how much of the weight is just factored into the experience? And then is your current weight longer or shorter than what that should be? Next up material set up technology. So this comes down to the gear the setting. UM. Like, for instance, if you're dealing with something like free skiing, it's you know, getting your skis ready lined up. If it's paintball, it's like checking your equipment to make sure

you're ready to blast paintballs. UM. Ultimately, is the gear in the setting are they slowing you down? Or is it speeding things up? Um? So it's not all that relatable to most standing in line scenarios, I imagine, but it's interesting and it does also remind me again of the t s a example, do I have all my stuff prepared? The and then the next area is cultural understanding quote formed by the discourses, cultural tropes, or value systems that play a role in the social organization of

practices unquote. So this would be things like team spirit or a concern for safety on the part of participants. So are you waiting in line like a bunch of gloom individuals who just want your your chance to shoot paintballs? Or are you like a team you know, are you like the the our heroes in Big Trouble in Little China when they're waiting in that elevator you know, yea, they're feeling good. It's a bonding experience. They're about to go down and you know, and fight the good fight.

Are you like that? Or you know, is a situation where like, yeah, we're waiting in line, but it's because they're doing safety checks up the up the line and making sure that everything is good to go, Like what is the the cultural understanding of the line you're in?

So the researchers here they argue that the misalignment of these elements is what can cause experiences of drag or rush uh, and that it falls to the designers and overseers of such waiting experiences to take these different factors into account um, which you know, again makes me think of like what kind of messaging are you putting forth when people are waiting in line, say at the airport, you know, is there is there messaging about how this

is about safety and this is about protecting you. Um uh, stuff of that nature. Um or is that kind of messaging absent? It is interesting to think about the the temporal distortions going in both directions, because almost all of the stuff I've read about about perception of time in in waiting in queues is is about people feeling like they're waiting too long. But yeah, it's interesting you bring up the idea of like airports and like sort of

like being rushed through at certain points of a line. Yeah, yeah, where you're like, oh, I'm not ready, I don't feel ready. I don't really want it to be my turn yet.

Though I have encountered that too when ordering food. If you're if you're way towards the front of the line, of the line isn't that short, and you don't know what you want yet, then perhaps you, like me, you don't want to be that person who's just you know, standing and himming and hying and trying to figure out what they want while other people are frustrated behind you. I'm going to be inclined to to say, hey, I'm

still figuring it out. Why don't you go ahead of me? Now, Another thing about the perception of time when waiting that I've read, at least as a generalization and a number of articles about this is that, Um, one thing that is particularly painful is not understanding what's going on in a line, Like when there's uncertainty, you don't know why you're waiting, or you don't know how long you're going to be waiting. That uncertainty can itself be a major

problem for people waiting for things. Yes, yeah, yeah, Like which which line am I in? Is this the line for the beer or the line for the bracelet for the beer? Um? What boarding group did they announce? Am I hanging out with the right people? Am I in the line to board with group five? Or am I standing with the people who are waiting for five to finish so that six can go? Uh? Like, all of

this can just breed unending frustration. Now, this least to the next thing I wanted to talk about, And that's so waiting and uncertainty. Um, because there's there's another aspect of waiting, not so much waiting in line, but waiting in general. Uh, you know, we're not always waiting on bagel sandwiches or the chance to blast strangers with paintballs. Sometimes we're waiting on potentially bad news, a wash and uncertainty,

and it can be an extremely grading experience. UM. Someone argue that it can be as difficult as actually receiving the news, UM, which which is interesting and you know, it doesn't have to be life and death. I mean, obviously when you're talking about um matters of health and wellness, this can be tough. But it can also be tough with things like grades uh, um, you know, finding out

what's wrong with your automobile. I experienced that in the last twenty four hours, where it's like I was feeling like this just totally unnecessary level of bodily stress over not knowing why my airbag light was on, you know, uh so but so so just waiting on on hearing the actor hearing what's wrong with something. Even that is again has nothing to do with your your your ultimate health and happiness. It can it can have this, uh,

this kind of semi debilitating effect on you. So I wanted to look at a few different studies dealing at least in part with this experience, and I think all of them involved, you see riverside worry and waiting expert Kate Sweeney who has explored this quite a bit and has has pointed out that a lot of this comes down to repetitive rumination over the past and repetitive worry about the future. Uh. You know, for for the airport example, I imagine it would equate to did I pack everything

right and remember to take out that pocket knife? And will the T S A agent be mean to me when I get to the front of the line and I don't have my um, you know, my passport facing the right direction. That sort of thing, and UM while waiting in line or otherwise can always be dull when it is unpleasant. Uh. These are often the factors involved.

And I think you could probably expand I mean that that kind of flows into a lot of things we've talked about regarding UM, you know, the default mode network in the past, thinking about the past and the present, and how we can turn you know, things like pain into into into something like suffering. Sure, so what do we end up doing? Well, we engage in various coping activities to alleviate the feeling UM such as and these are the ones that that Sweeney highlights distraction. Okay, this

is the big one. We've already touched on this before. You know, reaching for your phone, uh, you know, looking at your your your email or your social media, or playing a game checking the news distraction. Distraction is generally regarded to be a good way to cope with waiting. Uh, take your mind off of things, do something else, uh, you know, throw yourself at your work, busy yourself. Right,

And while this seems to be the case. According according to Sweeney, along with Rankin and Walsh, co authors of the twenty eight team paper published in Personality and Social set in this and Social psycho Psychology bulletin a Better Distraction um, distractions, even good ones, do not always work, and they point to several studies showing people who reported exerting more effort to distract themselves during a weight displaying

higher levels of worry. So the efforts to distract oneself also seem to predict poor self reported health and greater sleep disruption. So the take home here is distraction can work, but it's not not a silver bullet, and it can certainly backfire many of these cases. Perhaps to state the obvious, I guess that would probably depend highly on on what kind of distraction you're seeking, right, right, Some are inherently better than others. Yeah, and and and she gets into

some of that in a bit here. Um. Another thing they point to is flow states. So we've talked about this before in the show. Is a general means of compating the the ruinous powers of the default mode network. However, they argue that a flow state requires several conditions, quote, the presence of perceived challenges, the opportunities for action that stretch without over extending existing skills, and clear uh proximal goals, coupled with immediate feedback on one's progress. Flow states are

really interesting in this regard. And if you're not familiar with the concept, you can think about it as doing something that is that is challenging enough that it's not boring, but easy enough that you are continuously successful at it. Uh And so it's like, you know that that's sort of like a video game that is just at the perfect level of difficulty that it's just hard enough that you're always on the edge of failing, but you keep succeeding.

And the weird thing is it can be ephemeral, especially if you're going after it, right, because trying to achieve a flow state can be frustrating. And then once you're in the flow state, you're probably not reflecting on the fact that you're in a flow state. Yeah, being in a flow state is inherently non reflective. You're just sort of in the moment. So the authors here they argue that the flow state seems to be the best candidate

to combat waiting, worry, and uncertainty related distresses. They conducted a study using a hundred and fifty law students and found that mindfulness meditation served to postpone the phenomenon of bracing. This is when you prepare for the worst, which can be useful, more useful than optimism, especially like sort of blind optimism, easy, easy, even, but not, they write, if

it occurs too early in the process. Um, you know, it's one thing to prepare yourself for the worst case scenario towards the end, But if you're preparing yourself for the worst case scenario for the entire run of whatever the exercise might be, Uh, you know that that can be a miser inducing experience, right, And some people have the tendency to over prepare for the worst by doing what we might call rumination, you know, obsessing with the

worst possible outcomes things could take and just going through per mutations of them over and over again in your brain, which I guess is only really useful and to the extent that it actually does help you prepare. Most of the time people would go beyond the point where it's helping them prepare, and it's just making them further more

and more miserable. Yeah, a lot of times it can essentially become a kind of fantasizing about doom and you know, preparing a script for a situation that that ultimately does not occur anyway. In this study, they found that mindfulness meditation worked even when only practice fifteen minutes once a week, though they acknowledge that meditation is not for everyone and does not necessarily come easy. Um And I feel like this is something I've seen stressed in some other writings

recently talking about how you know. So, I feel like scientific studies are one thing, but when more generally meditation and meditative practices are recommended, sometimes this is not taken into account or it's not um stressed enough to the individual that achieving this this, uh, this this state of mind might be difficult and might even be disruptive in

the short term. You know, well, sure, even if you get a collection of good scientific studies finding that on average mindfulness meditation does give you some kind of positive psychological outcome, those are those results are still just on average. I mean, you're gonna have whatever chunk of the study cohort that it didn't actually do that for Yeah, and not if your brain is the same. Not every emotional um array is the same, so uh, definitely worth taking

into account. Now. Another Sweeney research paper, this one from nineteen, looked at another tactic to overcome the worries of waiting uh, inducing a feeling of awe or a state of wonder and this was this was interesting as well. So they point out that meditation can help. Flow states can help, but again, these may simply not be easily achievable for everyone.

Um And this this makes sense, right, if you're like super stressed out over something and you're anticipating some bad news, It's it's one thing to think I should do some meditation, I should do some yoga, but it's it's another thing to actually do that. Sometimes it's just not feasible, where it's just not going to happen because you know, nobody's gonna step in and make you do it, or you just don't. You just don't have you in in you

like every everybody struggles different uh, etcetera. Uh. But this is where they bring up the idea of of the awe that comes with a deeply moving piece of music or a work of film, which again is going to be very um subjective. Uh. But uh, I want to get into the details of the study because it's quite interesting.

So seven twenty nine participants took a fake intelligence test um, so basically, you know, it's like an i Q test um, and then they're they're they're all gonna the ideas that people will have this anxiety over what the results will be. Oh well, let's say I'm smart. Let's say I'm not smart. Uh, I'm I'm nervous. So while waiting on these results, the participants watched one of three videos. Video one, an awe induction video of a sunrise with stirring music. Sounds good.

Number two, a positive control video of cute animals, also sounds good. But but again, when's the last time that a cute animal video actually gave you a sense of awe, I mean the sense of awe, but not a sense of awe. And then finally number three, video number three, a neutral video about how padlocks are made. Speak for yourself. Is that neutral? Uh? In this experiment it's neutral, though I could again it is kind of subjective, and I

know that it could be. I know that in certain states of mind, um, various videos and documentaries about the mass production of things like padlocks can certainly have that kind of effect on people. Definitely true. So when he found that people watching the awe video the Sunrise the Stirring music experienced significantly greater positive emotion and less anxiety during the period waiting, so Sweeney brings up watching an episode of Planet Earth as a potential way to go

about this. Though my mind instantly went to two thousand and one of Space Odyssey, especially the first uh what the first half hour, so where you get the dawn of man, plus the introduction to the space station and space travel and so forth. Well, I'd be right there with you, except I'd say, for for people who aren't exactly the kind of weirdo we are, maybe maybe a nature documentary might be more generally effective. I don't know, Yeah, yeah.

I mean, again, it's going to be subjective. What gives you a sense of all I think it's worth Again, you know, this is highly subjective. This is just one study, but it's it's a good enough case that I feel like it wouldn't be the worst advice in the world for for people to think, Okay, what is my awe video? What is the thing that I can turn to if if I could do with some relief whilst waiting on some you know, potentially bad news, or just for the

results from some stressful situation. I mean, what is all? All? I think is uh generally understood to be sort of the recognition of something grander than oneself, you know, and that that could be a million different things. I mean, for some people that's like the religious thing about like God or the spirit of the cosmos beyond other For other people that could just be something about the biosphere

or the universe or the earth. Um. You know, it's it's just a recognition of some broader context or greater power. And so when you think about those kinds of things, it tends, I think, maybe to make one's own problems or worries feel smaller. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like, what is your monolith? Your MONOLITHU might just be watching

the monolith seen from two thousand and one. It might be watching like an incredible athletic performance, you know, like that can that can be inspiring as well, Like I it is legitimately inspiring to see the athletic feats that some people were capable of of producing. You know, sure, now I want to look at it. Just briefly mentioned one more Sweeney study, mainly because it it relates to

something we've covered on the show in the past. Uh. Sweeney inen looked at the effects of our old friend Tetris. Tetris effect speaking of flow states, yeah yeah, yeah, go go listen to our episodes on Tetris back in the Vault for an overview of how this would work. But Sweeney found that Tetris could provide a quote state of

perfect detachment, a shortcut to flow. That's interesting. It lines up with some of the things we talked about in that episode that Tetris is an almost perfect engine for creating that sort of you know knife's edge of of just challenging enough. You know. It's funny. We went three whole episodes about queuing and waiting on things, and and yet I feel like we've just barely waded into the shallows of this. There's like, there's so much stuff on the subject. We could do a whole podcast, I think

about a queuing and waiting for things. I don't think we even mentioned Tom Petty at all. Did weigh Tom Petty. That's the hardest part. Yeah, even though that song came up in numerous study introductions that I came across. Yeah, well, I well, I can't recall of and if it was if they were the papers or the sometimes the the articles about the studies. But I saw Tom Petty mentioned a couple of times. Do you have a favorite Tom Petty song? Um? I really like Won't Back Down. That's

a great one. That's a great one. That one, That one kind of builds you up, you know, that one's like yeah, yeah, I can do it. But yeah, Tom Petty in general, Tom Petty is usually a good listen. I'm a big fan of I like you wreck Me. That's a great one. Yeah he did one. Yeah he didn't. Well, I'm sure he did more than one duet, But what's the big duet? I'm trying to remember do it? Yeah, I don't remember a duet. Oh, Stevie Nicks, stop dragging my heart around. That's a great Oh yeah of course,

so yeah, that is a good one. Can't go wrong. Not liking to Petty would be like not liking bread, just like somebody says that you're like, what, all right, Well, we're gonna go and close it out there. But we'd love to hear from everybody, uh about these episodes on waiting? How do they relate to your experiences? Um? If you were to stockpile like a an AWE DVD or an AWE video file, uh for hard times, what would that be? I'm generally curious to know what is your two thousand

and one of Space Odyssey. In the meantime, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can head right over to the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, where you will find all of our episodes. You'll find new episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday, Listener Mail on Monday. On Friday's we do

a little weird how cinema. That's our time to just talk about a weird and interesting film for a little bit and then on the weekends we do or we run um and then on Sunday's usually nothing. Sometimes there's a promo for another show on Sunday. I don't know, it just depends how it goes. Huge things as a

ways to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.