I am trying to find the right terminology or phrase to describe a type of behaviour that I often observe in the physical world, and would like to know if there is some equivalent behaviour in interface interaction.
This is often see when a person is waiting at a pedestrian crossing, and they press the button repeatedly in the hope that it would speed up the change in traffic signal (unfortunately it doesn't necessarily happen, depending no how the traffic signal controller is programmed). As they run out of patience, a decision is made to press the button for the final time(s) and if it didn't change as then they would cross because the threshold for the time that they are prepared to wait has expired..
So while the person has every intention to cross even if the signal is not green at the last attempt, they would still press the button anyway in case for some reason it does change on cue. To me it seems like a redundant behaviour because they were going to cross the light whether the signal changed or not, yet they still press the button.
I would like to know if there's some existing way of describing this behaviour, and whether there are examples observable in the user interface interactions that we come across everyday.