Impatience for negative experiences

Abstract

Conceptualizing impatience as an emotion, and patience as the regulation of that emotion, offers new insights and opportunities for the study of consumer behavior. While this framework has primarily been applied to impatience for positive events, many real-life events of interest involve decisions about negative or mixed-valence events. In this commentary, I explore how impatience and patience play out in these situations, explaining a set of previously disconnected “anomalies” in the literature on intertemporal choice, yielding fresh insights and applications in consumer psychology. Finally, I explore when and how people may want to cultivate (rather than regulate) impatience for gains and losses.