Marshmallows and Willpower

In 1972 a psychologist named Walter Mischel and his team of researchers from Stanford University designed a study that was intended to determine whether early indications of self-control could be projected into the future. Children were presented with a marshmallow and were told that the researcher was going to leave the room for a while. If the child could wait to eat the marshmallow, when the researcher returned 15 minutes later they would bring a second marshmallow and the child could have both. If the child was unable to wait, they could ring a bell to bring the researcher back right away and only have the one marshmallow. Originally, the findings suggested that children who could wait by exhibiting self-control had better outcomes in life regarding academics, school completion, and a bunch of other metrics. The below snippet of a show called Magic for Humans is my favorite version of the Marshmallow Test (although not an actual research experiment). Check out the whole episode for some great kid reactions.

This study has been repeated with adaptations several times and serves as an interesting first look at the ability to delay and defer wishes, to focus on long term goals instead of short term rewards, and to distract from or suppress impulses. Some findings have suggested that trust that the reward would be given, which was largely based on the child’s general trust in adults, was an impacting factor as well. As parents, we could likely predict whether our child would be gleefully eating a marshmallow immediately or would be disciplined enough to wait for a larger reward. Either way, it is interesting to see how trends in a child’s behavior track with them into the future. If your child would already have scarfed down the marshmallow and would be digging through the cabinets to find more, you may be thinking about the 20 year old version of your child and the consequences of having struggles with successfully committing to long-term goals. Don’t worry, there is still time to build these skills. Click this section to see some addition more in depth information from the American Psychological Association on willpower and gratification. Overall, the gift that we can give our children is the ability to pause when they want to go, to think when they want to do, and to distract themselves in meaningful ways so that they refrain from impetuously rushing ahead. Its a life skill and now is the time to start learning it. If you don’t know how to do that, this quick review of some ways to start supporting this skill set can be found here.

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