I still remember the wait to find
out whether I had gotten into the college of my choice. I applied early and was told that letters
would be mailed out on December 15. That
period was filled with occasional bouts of stress and a lot of thoughts about
whether I would get in. The last few
days were particularly difficult as I waited for the mail to come. On the day that the letter finally arrived, I
put it down on the kitchen table and did a few chores around the house before
finally sitting down and opening it.
That kind of waiting experience
is common. Admissions decisions, medical
test results, job applications. All of
these have some period of time where you have to wait to get news, but there is
little or nothing you can do to affect the outcome of the decision.
An interesting paper by Kate
Sweeny and Sara Andrews in the June, 2014 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examines how these
kinds of waiting periods unfold.
They studied 50 people who took
the California Bar exam. There is a
4-month waiting period between taking the exam and getting the test score. Succeeding on this exam is crucial for people
who want to practice law.
Participants took a series of
personality measures prior to taking the exam.
Then, the researchers took measures of anxiety and various strategies
people use to deal with anxiety at four points in the process: a day after taking the exam, 6 weeks after
taking it, 12 weeks after taking it, and within a day of getting the score.
As you might expect, people were
very anxious a day after taking the exam.
That anxiety went down a bit at the 6-week mark and then began to creep
back up. People were quite anxious a day
before getting the scores. One of the
behaviors that went along with anxiety was rumination,
which is the tendency to think repeatedly about the source of the anxiety and
to worry about the outcome. The more
anxiety people experienced, the more they tended to ruminate.
A set of personality
characteristics was associated with lower levels of anxiety. People who have a general tolerance for
uncertainty were less anxious (particularly early on) than those with an
intolerance for uncertainty. Though, as
the date for getting the test score approached, everyone got nervous. This tolerance for uncertainty is related to
another characteristic called Need for
Closure, which reflects how much people like to be done with things. The higher people’s need for closure, the
more they were anxious about waiting (particularly early in the waiting
period).
Two other personality
characteristics were also important:
defensive pessimism and dispositional optimism. Defensive pessimism is a person’s tendency to
assume the worst outcome when waiting.
Dispositional optimism is a person’s tendency to assume things will work
out well in the end. When people are
highly optimistic and low in defensive pessimism, they tend to ruminate much
less than when they are low in optimism and high in defensive pessimism.
The researchers created a
composite of these four characteristics, because they tended to be similar
within a person. That is, people who
were tolerant of uncertainty were also generally low in need for closure, high
in optimism and low in defensive pessimism.
A high value on this composite
was generally related to healthier approaches to waiting than a low value on
this composite. For example, people with
a high composite personality score spent less time bracing themselves for bad
news than people with a low composite.
They also spent more time trying to be optimistic and had high levels of
hope that the outcome would go well.
People tried to distance themselves from the outcome as well. This worked for some people early on, but as
the actual date of getting the test score got closer, it got harder for people
to distance themselves.
What does all of this mean?
First of all, it is worth getting
to know yourself a bit to understand how you deal with waiting for news. The more tolerant you are of uncertainty, the
lower your need for closure (that is, the less you need things to be complete),
the more optimistic and less pessimistic your outlook, the better you cope with
waiting for news.
If you happen to be someone who
finds waiting particularly difficult, then, what can you do?
Purely from the standpoint of
dealing with anxiety, it is useful to help yourself stop ruminating about the
outcome and to avoid spending time preparing yourself for the worst. Those behaviors are associated with a high
level of anxiety.
If you find it hard to stop
thinking about the outcome, then it is helpful to find ways to think about
other things. After all, you can’t
affect the outcome while you are waiting, so you should not spend too much time
worrying about it. Instead, think about
other things. Focus on other aspects of
your life. Exercise, play a musical
instrument, go out with friends. Do
things that are unrelated to the news you are waiting for.
All that said, when the time for
getting the news is very close, it is hard to avoid thinking about it. At that point, you might want to spend at
least a little time planning for what you will do if things do not go your
way. It can be helpful to have at least
the outline of a plan for what will happen if you get bad news. But, there is no point in starting that
planning process too early.
