The marshmallow test is a test often given to children. It is supposed to test their ability to delay gratification and has been linked to emotional IQ and success in some studies…
This depends on how you identify success. Delayed gratification seemed to correlate with higher SAT scores. However, the numbers in the original study were small and more concentrated on questions of whether being able to see the treats made it harder to delay gratification (yes) or whether being told to think happy thoughts made it easier (also yes). Subsequent studies have shown that academic success correlates with delayed gratification, but this effect disappears when you control for socioeconomic status. In other words, children of higher socioeconomic status are more able to delay gratification. This may be related to parental modeling, where those of higher economic status are more likely to be able to save up for things and children are more able to trust that promises of treats, etc will be kept. There is also a direct correlation between socioeconomic status and higher education.
In other words, if you grow up in a poor family, you will be less likely to trust that you will indeed get a treat after waiting and you also will be less likely to have high SAT scores or to pursue higher education (what the experiment calls academic success).
The ability to invest your resources in an endeavor that bears fruit later instead of immediately enables you to achieve all kinds of things in life. The first thing that comes to mind for most people is the ability to save money for your future instead of pursuing instant gratification. But it can also be about finishing your homework so you’ll get a good grade a week from now, or finishing your classes so you’ll get a degree a few years from now. It can also be about resisting the urge to lash out in a moment of anger or frustration in a way that compromises your future, (e.g. road rage, bar fights, domestic violence), or pausing during the heat of passion so you can take steps to avoid an unwanted pregnancy.
As with anything, it can be taken to excess. A person who lives a miserably ascetic life so as to accumulate a massive retirement nest egg is probably not making a wise choice, especially since they (like any of us) might not live long enough to enjoy the delayed fruits of their labor. Balance between delayed gratification and living in the now is healthy, but the ability to delay gratification is a necessary tool for achieving that balance
Is this true? I knew about the Marshmallow Test as a famous psychological experiment, and that it had been done more than once, but is it a regular thing?
It seems like a no-brainer that the ability to delay gratification is a good thing and is necessary for certain kinds of success (see @Machine_Elf’s post). That doesn’t mean that delaying gratification is necessarily the best thing to do in every circumstance.
And this is one criticism of the marshmallow test that I’ve seen: that it tests not just the ability to delay gratification, but the sense of security and trust that the promised rewards will indeed be available later if you do delay gratification.
I’ve heard and read many second-hand descriptions of the marshmallow experiment (they didn’t even all agree on the type of sweet involved), and I’m very dubious about the supposed conclusions. If the test is in part a measure of a child’s willingness and ability to delay gratification, it is surely also a measure of a child’s willingness to trust adults’ promises. The lived experience of children is that adults’ promises to children are so lightly made and routinely broken as to be almost worthless. For all the child knows, the adult will return after the agreed time and take away the marshmallow. (And indeed, this could be the design of a different psychological experiment.) Eating the marshmallow in front of you may well be the rational choice.
My parents were pretty good about it – to the point at which my mother, to my frustration, often refused to make definite promises. One of my clearer early memories is of my first day at kindergarten, which I recall as rather a disaster in various ways, starting with the discovery that although we were clearly told that we didn’t have to pick a number and write it all over a piece of paper, in practice if I didn’t want to do it they were going to hassle me until I did. I was so astonished that the grownups had lied to me that I didn’t get around to complaining about this for years.
Yeah, that wasn’t my “lived experience,” at least as far as I can remember; and I trust my memory pretty well because throughout my life, my parents have been honest people, not the type to lightly make and routinely break promises.
Which may support @hibernicus’s point, that the test measured the children’s willingness to trust adult promises—which may vary according to how trustworthy they have found the adults in their lives to be. Although, that may be one of the factors that determines a child’s willingness and ability to delay gratification.
Oh yes, I agree with that. It was about the first thing I thought of when I first read about that experiment: because I knew by then that a lot of adults do lie to kids, and also knew by then that a lot of adults, while not intending to lie, make what I might call hopeful promises to children – they really hope they can fulfill them, and they want to make the child happy in the moment, but in practice they’re promising things they’re not able to do; whether for lack of time or lack of money or inability to get others to cooperate. (And lack of money can also of course cause lack of time and/or less ability to get others to cooperate).
I quoted the whole post because the first part and the second part together is what makes the question relevant. Where’s the balance? And how does one know if they will get the thing at the end?
My uncle worked tirelessly until he was 65, had a huge retirement party where he looked the happiest I’ve ever seen him then died a year later.
A classmate always waited until the last second to do his homework and did well enough that he’s an attorney today.
Many people who put off having kids now can’t have any.
As a society, many of the things that were promised are not delivered as routinely as in the past. Pensions are getting taken away by bankrupt companies. People can lose their life savings in the stock market. Many college graduates in the last few decades have a huge debt and no job to go along with their sacrifice.
This next article is more about the instant gratification of the internet, but I think it has wider implications. If someone wants something bad enough, they’ll wait for it. People even train their dogs on youtube to wait for steak. Maybe people don’t have to work so hard on training to get that ability as people seem to think. Another thing this research has shown is that sometimes delaying gratification comes at the expense of some creativity and spontaneity.
I have heard it said that the Marshmallow Test has recently been discredited but when you read how it has supposedly been discredited, it hasn’t really been discredited at all. It’s just that the conclusions to be derived from the results are not what (some) originally assumed.
The Marshmallow Test still shows that that there is a significant correlation between outcomes from the test and later life outcomes. However, the later studies show the effect diminishes or even disappears if you control for socioeconomic factors.
So what this means is not that the Test isn’t significant or useful, but that the reason outcomes differ is (or is in substantial part) nurture not nature.
As usual with this stuff, the nature/nurture ideological battle tends to result in people over- or understating results to suit their agenda.
TIL (things I learned) about the marshmallow test.
Cuttlefish can pass the marshmallow test.
The guy who created the marshmallow test, Walter Mischel, had temper problems and couldn’t quit smoking.
A blogger points out some of the limitations of the tests that have become popular cultural icons. He lists the marshmallow test along with these other 15 experiments.
About the marshmallow test: (mostly mentioned upthread already)
Well, yes, but those factors basically boil down to having more money. Yes, that’s on the ‘nurture’ side of things, but a positive correlation between wealth and later success in life is hardly a novel idea or especially insightful.
Karen Pryor, a professional animal trainer, got started as a dolphin trainer as one of the founders of Sea Life Park, Honolulu, as described in her memoir Lads Before The Wind. They also did open ocean research, using their trained dolphins as assistants. They didn’t want to give them a fish for every little thing they did, as it would tend to attract sharks.
So they trained their dolphins to work for tokens. They’d given the dolphins plastic tokens, which the dolphins then put into a bucket. At the end of the session, they were given the tokens again, which they could then trade in for fish. The dolphins had no problem learning that.
I’ve been contemplating a post along similar lines since I first saw the thread title in the feed. I simply do not like marshmallows, and so would have no trouble at all resisting a marshmallow. Particularly a small one. Set it on the desk in front of me, and the hardest thing would be to keep from swatting it away, never mind eating it. Marshmallow for my hot cocoa? Please don’t ruin my hot cocoa. Rocky road ice cream? Why’d they have to go and ruin the ice cream by jamming it up with a bunch of icky marshmallows!?
And don’t even get me started on… peeps (:cringe face:)
