There is no ‘rule of six’ – the truth about the science of queueing

You wait longer when other people are behind you, we should stand on both sides of an escalator, and we usually get away with pushing in. Psychology professor Adrian Furnham explains what studies show us about standing in line

Every Saturday at 7am, Adrian Furnham, professor of psychology at University College London, can be found shopping at his local supermarket. "It's the same sad old gits, who recognise me," he says. "But we know it's very efficient. Although there are only two people on the till, I'm through the whole thing and back home within 20 minutes. I've tried shopping at different places and different times, and that is optimal."

Furnham studies queueing, but is not immune to its stresses. Last week, his latest research was widely reported as revealing a "rule of six" behind queueing behaviour: people will wait for only six minutes in a queue, and are unlikely to join one with more than six people in it. This simplification has a grain of truth. Six minutes of queueing does make people impatient, but it is not a magic length of time beyond which people stop waiting. For one thing, it depends what they are waiting for. "You won't wait for six minutes at an ATM machine," Furnham says, "but you will if you want concert tickets. Six minutes was the sort of average."

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