Wachttheorie

Wachttheorie is a theoretical framework in psychology and behavioral sciences that studies how people experience and respond to waiting, delays, and uncertainty. It seeks to explain why some individuals endure long waits while others seek to shorten them, by examining perceived duration, anticipated benefits, and emotional states associated with waiting.

Core ideas include time perception, anticipation, and tolerance. Waiting is viewed as a trade-off between an immediate alternative and a future outcome. The subjective value of waiting depends on factors such as expected reward, task relevance, reliability of the wait, and social context. The theory draws on concepts from delay discounting, expectancy-value theory, and affective forecasting to model decisions about whether to wait.

Methodologically, Wachttheorie uses experimental manipulations of delay and reward, psychometric measures of time perception, and sometimes integrates with queueing concepts to study patience in crowd settings or service contexts.

Applications span consumer behavior (patience with lines and online delays), user experience design (anticipated loading times), health and clinical settings (appointment and treatment adherence), and transportation planning (acceptable wait times).

Relation to other theories: it intersects with Warteschlangentheorie in operational contexts and with delay discounting in economics. Criticisms concern variability across cultures and situations, measurement challenges, and the risk of conflating waiting with other cognitive processes such as frustration or expectation.