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Picture this: you're at the grocery store and you just want to go home and make dinner,
设想一下，你身处杂货店，只想回家做晚餐，
but you're stuck in line and the guy in front of you is pulling out canned goods
却被困在队伍里，而你前面的人正在取出罐头食品，
like he is not in a race, some kind of snail man,
就像他不是在赛跑，而是某种“蜗牛人”，
and there's a person in front of him that's having a problem with their check.
而他前面的一个人支票有问题。
It's taking forever, and the other lines are just as bad.
你要永远等待，其他队伍也一样糟糕。
We've all experienced this form of purgatory.
我们都经历过这种形式的炼狱。
Waiting in line can be so unbearable that many people will pay hundreds of dollars to avoid it,
排队实在太难以忍受了，以至于很多人会花几百美元来避免，
whether it's at the airport or for a ride or a rollercoaster.
不管这种情况是在机场，还是在兜风，或者是坐过山车。
But even though we all hate waiting, the frustration isn't necessarily because of how long you have to wait.
尽管我们都讨厌等待，但挫折并不一定是因为你要等多久。
It's how you experience the waiting that matters,
重要的是你如何经历等待，
how you think about waiting, and how you spend the time.
如何思考等待，以及如何消磨时间。
So there are ways to make waiting feel less awful.
有几种办法能让等待的感觉不那么糟糕。
Psychologists and operations researchers, for instance, have discovered
例如，心理学家和操作研究人员发现，
that if you're bored, that wait is going to feel a lot longer.
如果你无聊，感觉等待的时间就会更长。
In one experiment, a bank in downtown Boston installed a Times Square-style news ticker
在一次实验中，波士顿市中心的一家银行安装了时报广场风格的滚动新闻，
to try and bump up customer satisfaction.
来努力提高客户的满意度。
The average wait time actually increased slightly, compared to when the bank didn't have the ticker.
和银行没有滚动新闻时相比，平均的等待时间实际增加了一点儿。
But because the customers had something to do,
但是客户因为有事可做，
they said they were willing to wait a little bit longer, and left happier.
说愿意再等一会儿，而且离开时更开心。
Some customers were even convinced that the bank had hired more tellers and had sped up their service.
一些顾客甚至相信，银行已经雇佣了更多出纳员，加快了他们的服务。
Distractions like this can be powerful because they affect how quickly you think time is passing.
这样的干扰很强大，因为它们会影响你认为时间流逝的速度。
Psychologists have found that our ability to estimate time
心理学家发现，我们估计时间的能力
partially depends on how much attention we devote to something.
部分取决于我们对某事的关注程度。
In one set of experiments, scientists told some volunteers that they were going to ask them to estimate time.
在一组实验中，科学家告诉一些志愿者将要求他们估算时间。
Then, these volunteers were given two visual search tasks,
然后，给了这些志愿者两个视觉搜索任务，
one easy, and one hard, for various lengths of time.
一个简单，一个困难，时间不同。
And finally, they guessed how long it took to do each one.
最后，他们猜测每个任务需要花多长时间。
While the participants were pretty good at estimating how long it took them to do the easy task,
参与者很擅长估计完成简单任务花费的时间，
they underestimated how long the complicated one took.
却低估了复杂任务花费的时间。
For example, people thought a four-minute challenge took less than three minutes.
例如，人们认为一个四分钟的挑战用时不到三分钟。
Trials like these have led some psychologists to propose
这样的试验让一些心理学家提出，
that we have a limited pool of so-called attentional resources.
我们所谓的注意力资源有限。
And if your brain is engaged with something, you have fewer resources to devote to tracking time.
如果你的大脑忙于某件事，就会用更少资源追踪时间。
But when you don't have anything to focus on,
但是你没有什么可以专注的时候，
like if you're standing in a long grocery line, your attentional resources are focused on time passing.
比如你站在一条长长的杂货店队伍里，注意力资源就会集中在时间的流逝上。
And that makes time seem like it's going very slowly.
使得时间流逝看起来非常缓慢。
Even though we have these hypotheses, neuroscientists don't know much about what your brain is actually doing.
即使我们有这些假设，神经学家对大脑的实际工作仍了解不多。
It's possible that all brain tissue is involved in sensing time,
所有的脑组织都有可能参与感知时间，
although your right parietal cortex may be especially important.
虽然你的右顶叶皮层特别重要。
People with damage to this part of the brain make mistakes when they estimate short amounts of time.
大脑这部分受损的人在估计短时间时会犯错误。
Now, because our perception of time depends on what we're doing,
因为我们对时间的感知取决于当前做的事，
companies have figured out that they don't necessarily need to cut down on wait times to keep customers happy.
公司已经发现，他们不必为取悦客户而减少等待时间。
Sometimes, they can do some counterintuitive tricks
有时候，他们会做一些违反直觉的把戏，
to take advantage of what we know about the psychology of waiting.
来利用我们所知的等待心理。
The Houston airport, for instance, was getting a lot of complaints from passengers
例如，休斯顿机场接到了很多乘客的投诉说
that it took too long to pick up stuff at the baggage claim.
在行李认领处拿东西花得时间太长了。
So the airport actually moved their arrival gates farther away from the baggage claim,
于是机场把他们的下机门搬到了离行李认领处更远的地方，
so that passengers would have to walk farther to get there after landing.
这样，乘客着陆后必须走更远的路程才能到达目的地。
And you would think that people would be upset about the longer walk,
你可能会认为他们会因走得更远而感到沮丧，
but they weren't, and it kept them occupied.
但是没有，路程占据了他们的注意力。
By the time they made it to the baggage claim, they only had a few minutes of waiting left.
他们到达行李认领处后，只需等待几分钟就可以了。
The number of complaints dropped, even though the total wait time had not changed at all.
尽管总的等待时间没有改变，但投诉数量下降了。
Waiting can also be made less miserable if you have some heads up about it.
如果你有一些想法，那么等待的痛苦就会少点儿。
One business school experiment back in 1999, when the Internet was tortoise-speed,
1999年，当互联网龟速的时候，一个商学院做了一次实验，
found that people who were told how long a webpage would take to load viewed the site
发现那些被告知浏览网站加载网页需要多长时间的人，
more positively than those with no information.
比没有信息的人更积极。
They had the volunteers waiting for the websites to load for up to four minutes!
他们让志愿者们等待网站加载4分钟！
Which is so great, I'm so happy that it's not 1999!
太棒了，我很高兴现在不是1999年！
The idea here also boils down to attention.
这个想法也可以归结为注意力。
If you're not sure when the page might load or when your number might be called at the DMV,
如果您不确定页面何时可以加载或何时可以在车管局调用号码，
then you're going to be paying more attention to time.
那么你就会更加注意时间。
Like, will it be 20 seconds or 20 minutes?
比如，需要20秒还是20分钟？
Psychologists have also proposed that this kind of uncertainty can make people anxious,
心理学家还提出，这种不确定性会让人焦虑，
which could make the wait seem longer.
导致等待似乎更久。
So, the next time you're suffering in a line, don't panic!
所以，你下次排队的时候，不要惊慌！
You have some control over how you perceive the wait, no matter how long you end up waiting.
不管等多久，你可以控制自己看待它的方式。
So find something interesting to do!
找一些有趣的事情来做吧。
Chat up your fellow line-standers. Read a book. Or, I got an idea,
和排队的人聊天，读一本书。或者我有了一个主意，
get your phone out and learn more about your brain by watching another SciShow Psych episode,
把你的手机拿出来，通过看另一个心理科学秀来更多地了解大脑。
like this episode right here about how far people will go to fit in.
比如这集是关于人们多久才能适应的。
And don't forget to go to youtube.com/scishowpsych and subscribe!
别忘了登录youtube.com/scishowpsych，点击订阅哦。
