The Line-Up
Why do people stand in line when their chances of getting to see a hit movie or play are obviously hopeless?
At Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, legions of trusting souls regularly queue up hours before the box office opens to sell its small ration of tickets for a popular performance. The fans who stay up all night waiting to buy World Series tickets almost always exceed the modest supply.
Apparently, a particular kind of gambler's delusion is involved in queueing.
Leon Mann, a social psychologist at Harvard, and K. F. Taylor of the University of Melbourne, report in the Jour nal of Personality and Social Psychology that people in lines are possessed of a curious sixth sense that subconsciously spots the "critical point" when the sup ply of tickets will give out. Yet instead of giving up and going home, late comers succumb to an ersatz optimism and delude themselves into thinking that the line is shorter than it really is.
Mann and Taylor discovered the existence of this quirk by spending a sum mer month questioning people waiting in lines at sporting events or movie hous es. With uncanny precision, the research ers found, the mood of the queuers changed at the mysterious but universally recognizable dividing point. Ahead of it, people estimated the length of the line and their chances of success quite accurately; often they would over estimate the number of people ahead of them as a pessimistic cushion against being disappointed. But just behind the point, people consistently underestimated the size of the crowd ahead of them. The latecomer, the researchers conclude, is one of a special, desperate breed. He is blessed -- or cursed -- with an automatic mechanism for justifying the folly of sticking around and for "reassuring himself that his prospects are still good." The point in a line where pessimists shade into optimists, Mann and Taylor imply, is a good place for cooler heads to decide on quitting.
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