Those closest to me don’t necessarily associate me with the art of patience. When searching for a house this past fall, a mere three weeks passed before I thought the process had dragged on too long. Just a month after closing, I found myself increasingly frustrated with how painting takes two coats, sometimes three, unlike what the Behr Marquee brand website promises their customers.
Psychology is a relatively new branch of science and is at a disadvantage when it comes to seeking swift answers. Before us is the immense task of fully accounting for and systematizing the complexity of the human mind. To do this, we have at our disposal various research methodologies, depending on the goals and circumstances of a study’s specific topic.
Whatever methods we utilize, we must combat our penchant for instant gratification. Longitudinal studies face many challenges the longer they last, especially long-term commitment by researchers and participants (Ludlow et al., 2011). These studies, however, contribute invaluable information to the field.
For example, a 55-year follow-up conducted by Must, Jacques, Dallal, Bajema and Dietz (1992) revealed the impact of adolescence overweightness in adulthood with respect to mortality, morbidity and daily functioning. One of Werker and Tees’s (1984) experiments followed three children across three ages to control for confounding variables. They discovered that infants seem to lose the ability to discriminate sounds belonging to their nonnative language starting between 10 and 12 months, suggesting that a critical period for language acquisition ends then. Both studies show implications for lifespan development, the results of which are applicable to everyone in some form or another.
Regardless of whether a study utilizes a longitudinal design or another, short-term design, the post-study publishing process requires patience. The 2017 American Psychological Association’s summary report of journal operations outlines how it can take several months to receive a response, with high rejection rates to boot. Often for accepted articles, edits are then needed before the process can move forward.
Understandably, it can be discouraging to continually feel as if the results of our research are out of reach, if the study reaches its conclusion at all. Existing research establishes the pleasure principle, which explains why delaying gratification is not inherently appealing. Our limbic system opts for what stands right in front of us because the concept of a future reward seems incomprehensible and unfulfilling. Imagining expected roadblocks to a future reward, too, reduces our motivation to deny our impulses (Parthasarathi, McConnell, Luery, & Kable, 2017). Our belief as to whether an eventual goal will come to fruition can be offset by remembering past failures and our brains wanting to avoid similar pain (Mellers, 2000).
There’s no sign of psychological research slowing down, but how can we continue to apply what we’ve learned about instant gratification to go on propelling the field forward? It is a necessary question, as experimental psychologists are not immune to such discounting biases. We cannot take shortcuts in research designs that will provide us with answers as quick as we want them. We cannot shrug at the lack of resources to perform more nuanced, long-term studies which could reveal the effects of certain variables across the lifespan. Certainly, it is no individual psychologist’s burden to bridge the gap of what we do and do not know. But the field of psychology is at risk of avoiding crucial, long-term research designs and consisting of researchers whose physiology and professional environments both put an extreme emphasis on taking short-term views.
Unsurprisingly, I rushed my paint job at the end of the project, just to have it over and done with. I have little patience for fixing the trim or ceiling splatters, so I’ll most likely call a professional to avoid further frustration. A house’s paint job is not comparable to the value of the psychology field, but the foundation of my behavior can affect anyone. The bottom line is that the field of psychology cannot afford to adopt such a mindset. Impatience can lead to missed opportunities and breakthroughs; instant gratification denies fully utilizing what psychology aims to decipher in the first place. Should the American zeitgeist continue to rely on instant gratification and should researchers follow suit, the field of experimental psychology will flounder.
References
American Psychological Association. (2018). Summary report of journal operations, 2017. American Psychologist, 73(5), 683-684.
Ludlow, L. H., Pedulla, J., Reagan, E. M., Enterline, S., Cannady, M., & Chappe, S. (2011). Design and implementation issues in longitudinal research. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 19(11). Retrieved from https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/802
Mellers, B. A. (2000). Choice and the relative pleasure of consequences. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 910-924.
Must, A., Jacques, P. F., Dallal, G. E., Bajema, C. J., & Dietz, W. H. (1992). Long-term morbidity and mortality of overweight adolescents: A follow-up of the Harvard growth study of 1922 to 1935. The New England Journal of Medicine, 327(19).
Parthasarathi, T., McConnell, M. H., Luery, J., & Kable, J. W. (2017). The vivid present: Visualization abilities are associated with steep discounting of future rewards. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development, 25(1), 121-133.