The lack of delayed gratification in America

Great Debates
21

Reminds me of when I switched insurance carriers, and was quoted only monthly and quarterly prices. I said “How much is it if I pay the entire period upfront?”

Silence on the other end of the phone.

I read the Wikipedia article. They used pretzels and animal crackers. It’s good I wasn’t one of the children in the experiment; I would have monkey wrenched everything. I hate pretzels, and always have. I would have eaten a pretzel only as a punishment. And I was lukewarm on animal crackers. I had to be actually hungry to eat them. Wasn’t very fond of marshmallows either.

Was I just a weird kid, or did somebody fail to do the research into what kids really liked? Seems like a couple of Herhsey’s kisses, and there wouldn’t be a kid at Stanford who could delay gratification.

22

Someone brought those back to the office after a holiday in the US. I have no idea what you see in them.

23

They are a particularly ersatz quasi-chocolate flavor that most US kids grew/grow up with. And they were often offered as treats to those of us now of a certain age.

Objectively speaking Hershey’s “chocolate” sucks. Subjectively it tastes like childhood.

I have no doubt there are similar sweets in your culture that would baffle an American.

24

Modhat: Take Hershey Kisses discussion to a different (cafe) thread please.

25

I do think later studies (than the Stanford Marshmallow Study) imply that delayed gratification may be a surrogate for other elements of upbringing:

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/a-new-approach-to-the-marshmallow-test-yields-complex-findings.html

The results showed that, although children who were able to wait and resist temptation tended to have stronger math and reading skills in adolescence, the association was small and disappeared after the researchers controlled for characteristics of the child’s family and early environment. And there was no indication that the ability to delay gratification predicted later behaviors or measures of personality.

The authors concluded that interventions focused only on teaching young children to delay gratification are likely to be ineffective.

My take would be that it does have a lot to do with ‘effectiveness’ of the parents, socioeconomics, education levels, etc. Maybe a way to think about it is that delayed gratification may be one of the X number of habits of highly effective people (apologies to Stephen Covey), but that taking a surrogate beyond its intrinsic utility is a bit fraught.

26

Mod note:
And this comment added what to the thread. If it’s not interesting to you, don’t look at it. No warning.

27

Anyone remember the fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper? My point is the idea that some people aren’t willing to delay gratification goes back a lot longer than the creation of the United States.

28

We used to buy our kids large (maybe one pound) Toblerone bars at Chanuka every year, with the hope that they would dole them out over 8 days. With our daughter, no problem. Our older son would glom his in 2 days and then his sister (who would not share hers). So how did they turn out? Both are fully functional extremely responsible grownups. Yesterday afternoon Quebec opened up vaccinations to people over 80 living on Montreal Island (it had been previously limited to over 85). My son emailed me about it about two hours later, from which I infer that he had to be monitoring the situation constantly. (My wife and I now have appointments for Wednesday.) So much for the marshmallow test.

A real reason for the woeful US response is that a large number of conspiracy theorists have downplayed the virus. I think it was Nicolas Kristof writing the Times about a man who used a few of his last breaths to insist that Covid was not real. That’s not delayed gratification; that’s insanity.

29

Sure, but I don’t know if historical societies were bombarded with enticements specifically NOT to delay gratification like today’s people are.

I mean, there are LOTS of things that people buy on credit or get loans for that they could save up for, but the overwhelming social and advertising pressure is that it’s more important to have the new remodeled kitchen/giant TV/new car/etc… NOW, rather than scrimp and save for a while in order to get it without going into debt, or as much debt. Or that it’s more important to have those things rather than an equal amount of money in the bank/mattress/mason jar buried in the yard in case something goes south that you didn’t plan for.

It’ll probably be more controversial, but I think back in the day, people were somewhat more exposed to the consequences of their mistakes. If you didn’t put food away for the winter, or spent your money on ale, instead of fixing your roof, you had a difficult winter ahead of you. So you did it, or you were some combination of cold, uncomfortable or dead when winter came around. Same thing with seed; it is considered the height of desperation to eat one’s seed corn, and an indicator of poor planning, or extraordinary conditions.

Now of course this all assumes some degree of either seasonal (agrarian society) or constant (today) surplus that you can accumulate and use later. There are plenty of people who have razor thin margins who just flat out don’t have any surplus to save for later. I don’t think they’re the ones who we’re really discussing here. Rather we’re describing basically prosperous working class or middle class people who do have that surplus and choose not to save some or all of it for later.

I think you’re on to something here; a friend of the family was dating a guy for a while who was essentially poverty-class; he was dumb first of all, and didn’t make much money either. But on top of that, every time he did actually get a bit ahead (he worked construction), he spent it like it was on fire on stupid shit like gold jewelry, car gew-gaws, or on big ticket items like TVs, rather than hanging on to a couple hundred bucks here or there in case things didn’t work out. It was like every paycheck was some kind of marvelous windfall that he needed to spend before it evaporated, not something that he could expect to get periodically and that he could save a bit of for larger items/rainy days.

Where I was going is that as a middle class born and bred person, his choices and behavior seems viscerally wrong to me. Not in a “I don’t agree, but you do you.” kind of way, but in a gut-level reaction of “That fucker can damn well starve if he’s that much of an idiot.” kind of way. It goes against all the delayed gratification stuff that’s been beat into me for my lifetime, and doesn’t just strike me as something I disagree with, but as actually WRONG. I know intellectually it’s not that way, but on an emotional level it still strikes me that way.

30

Yes, I believe that is all true. I know SO many people who took out second and third mortgages back when those were being sold like candy, spent it all … somewhere … and ended up losing their house, having to sell their house with no equity in it, etc. etc. My sister almost being one of them (she was bailed out by my parents, and others). She would talk to me about how deep in debt she and her husband were and I just couldn’t understand the why of it. She’d say angrily, “that’s how everybody lives now!” Meaning my husband and I, who never went into debt for anything whatsoever, who saved up for our cars and vacations, were backward and inexplicably weird.

And I got that (without the anger at me for being so undeservedly fortunate to have savings) from everyone else too. They did what they were supposed to do, what everyone else was doing, and then kaboom, the bottom fell out and they were all very very surprised and chagrinned.

31

I live the way you do, and am quite wary of ending up with debts I can’t cover. My sister was/is the same way as yours, replete the with angry defensiveness if I try to warn her of the risks in even the most tactful pasteurized way. Of course, my mother backs her up.

Both of them however are not adverse to requesting my assistance to help make ends meet because they live so far beyond their means so that unexpected extra expenses/emergencies come down on them like a ton of bricks. No self introspection, no teachable moments: just “I/we need money and you have it…fork it over you heartless ogre”.

32

Mod whoosh?

33

I feel like this is somehow germane to the Poverty Escape Velocity thread in that the only difference between a lot of poor people and your siblings is the amount of money they bring in via income. Neither have any accumulated resources to buffer or remedy unforeseen events, but your siblings could if they chose to, and their day-to-day is generally a middle class lifestyle.

Why would they be angry at you? Because you didn’t stop them, or because you’re not willing to just fork over all that cash you went without (relative to them) in order to accumulate? Either way, that’s a supremely assholish attitude for them to have.

34

Well, in my case, my sister is a complicated person with a great deal of anger looking for a target. It’s not just about money at all. The way it is germane to this thread might be that money isn’t just a medium of exchange for anyone. It represents stuff. It might represent comfort, security, respect, independence, and a host of other possibilities.

That’s why talking about money is never just about economics. Ever.

35

Yes, I believe so. Extra 10 ponts for [b]TriPolar[b].

36

Here is a chart of the US Savings rate for 2020. It went from about 8% in February to a low of 12.9% in November. We are up to our asses in delayed gratification, and I’ve seen articles predicting a boom (like the post WW II boom) when we can finally spend our money.
Now some people caught Covid by not waiting to go to parties and the like - but plenty caught it from being stuck in low paying customer facing positions and being put at risk. I’m not sure you can use delayed gratification to explain why some idiots won’t wear masks.
I’m practice delayed gratification myself, and it is a problem, but 2020 is not the year to use to call out the population for it.

37

I apologize. I guess I was indeed whooshed. No warning to myself.

38

When I was a kid, my country (Israel) underwent a period of, if not hyperinflation, then at least something in the vicinity - in 1984, when I was 10, the annual inflation rate was 450%. And I knew this. I knew that prices were constantly going up, and that a Snickers bar that cost 500 shekels now could cost 600 shekels next week. So I never, ever saved cash. What would be the point? If anyone ever gave me money I’d spend it as soon as I could. It was the smart thing to do.

37 years later, the shekel is as stable a currency as any in the world, and I still hate carrying cash. Money in the bank is safe; money in my wallet is radioactive. I never carry more than the equivalent of $60 on me. Anything more needs to be either deposited or spent.

39

Interesting. So why was money in the bank safe? Were interest rates commensurate?

40

Remember, I was very young at the time, and economics isn’t really my thing, but from what I understand, Israel had an economic linkage system set in law, in which savings - and salaries - were linked to the Consumer Price Index. If the shekel’s value was halved, your saving account and paycheck was automatically doubled.

https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA-Archive/2001/Pages/Facets%20of%20the%20Israeli%20Economy-%20Inflation%20-%20The%20Ris.aspx