Eager For The Results of The Nevada Caucus? Psychology Urges Us to be Patient

The British politician John Major once said, “The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience.” And, with the Iowa caucuses still fresh in people’s minds, it might be a good time to remind ourselves of the many merits of patience.

Here are five research-backed reasons why we should do our best to stay calm in the face of election uncertainty.

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Mischel and his team first experimented with the Marshmallow Test in the early 1970’s. Interestingly, they followed up with the same children years later and found that children who waited for the reward tended to have better life outcomes, such as higher SAT scores, healthier body mass indexes, and higher educational attainment.

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#3. Getting it right is more important than getting it fast.

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Once the rumor mill starts turning, it’s almost impossible to shut down. A new study published in the journal Psychological Science underscores the perils of rumor-spreading in the age of social media. In this study, psychologists asked a group of people to evaluate a series of news headlines that they were told were fake. Participants were then asked how likely they would be to share these news stories on social media. The catch was this: some of the headlines were new while others were headlines they had seen earlier in the experiment. The researchers found that participants rated the previously seen headlines as more ethical, and more sharable, than the new headlines. In other words, prior exposure to information acted to legitimize its contents, even when the contents were known to be untrue. 

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