The old adage that “haste makes waste” is not a complete waste of breath, we learn from a recent study done by the Pew Research Center. In that study, Pew compared the overall reaction of Twitter users to important events over the past year (positive versus negative, conservative versus liberal) to broader public opinion.

The results showed that the reaction to events such as President Barack Obama’s reelection, the presidential debates, a court decision on California’s Proposition 8, Obama’s second inaugural address and the State of the Union Address, the tone of the “conversation” on Twitter is much more liberal, much more conservative, or much more negative than scientifically measured public opinion across the country.

As Pew noted, the demographics of Twitter users are considerably different from the general population.

There is, however, another important attribute of Twitter. On most websites, viewers have the ability to click a button and share a link to the site — with their own comments — immediately. They can do so without thinking twice, without pausing to read it again and make sure they understand it.

Analysis of this kind of feedback contrasts sharply with public opinion polling that studies the general population, who might read the same news or opinion on the Internet as the Twitter users Pew studied. They might watch the evening news every night, have cable news on the TV at all hours as background noise or listen to talk radio on the way to and from work. They might shout at the top of their lungs until they grow red in the face while they do so.

But the traditional participant in a public opinion poll has the opportunity to respond to the news for at least a few hours to condense his thoughts and talk about them with his wife or children or coworkers or neighbors, before a researcher calls with a litany of questions as he sits down to dinner. The Twitter user, who has the ability to immediately say whatever comes to mind, does not necessarily have that same mandatory interlude.

That interlude, between knowing about something and passing judgment on it in a public setting (in other words, to another person), allows an idea to be moderated and refined.

Just think of what good would come if our government officials allowed themselves time to ruminate on the issues of our time. An example from recent events is the sequestration of federal spending, which will cut more than $1 trillion over the next decade. Since Congress and the president procrastinated on the issue during their reelection campaigns, they were unable to make a deal before its scheduled effective date, Jan. 1. Then they put off the sequester for another two months.

Two months is hardly enough time to fix the federal budget. In the same way that responses to current events communicated through Twitter are more negative and more partisan than those of the general population, we should know by now that the same waste obtains in Congress. Without ample time in which to act and react and act again, members of Congress descend to the depths of partisanship and finger-pointing, rather than rising to the occasion and enacting a solution.