Science says people with this personality type tend to be chronically late
JTB Photo / Getty
But some humans are late most of the time.
Take, for example, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has missed a memorial service and held up an entire JetBlue flight thanks to his frequent tardiness.
He's not alone.
By one estimate, America loses $90 billion a year to people running late.
Psychological science is starting to find out why:
Tardiness partly has to do with having different definitions of "on time." You might think that five minutes late is acceptable, but your boss doesn't - or the reverse might be true.
It's also a matter of your habits: multitaskers are likely to be later than everybody else, since multitasking makes it harder to have "metacognition," or an awareness of what you're doing.
But chronic lateness may come down to something more essential - your personality type. San Diego State University psychologist Jeff Conte has found that people with achievement-oriented, hard-charging "Type A" personalities tend to be on time more than laid-back "Type B" people.
"Across three [of Conte's] previous studies, Type A individuals estimated that a minute passed in 58 seconds, compared with 77 seconds for Type B individuals," the Wall Street Journal reports.
In other words, the friend of yours who is always late may experience time differently than you.
"If you have an 18-second gap," Conte told the Journal, "that difference can add up."
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