When Wanting Closure Reduces Patients’ Patience

Abstract What makes patients impatient? We find that people both make impatient health decisions and experience impatience when waiting for healthcare partially because they are eager to achieve psychological closure on their goals. Across five preregistered studies (N = 1806), we first document an increased preference for a worse health device (Study 1) and more painful treatment (Study 2) when they allow for earlier goal closure, even though they would not provide remedy sooner. We next find that because the desire to achieve closure increases with proximity to a goal, the experience of impatience increases closer to the completion of a medical checkup (Studies 3–5). We discuss the implications of people’s desire to reach goal closure on the pursuit of both health habits and health care.