Summary-response:

A minimum of 3 pages total.

Summarize the main point of each article. 

Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, Vol. 244, May, 1989. pp. 933–938

Delay of gratification in children
By Walter Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, and Monica Rodriguez
Born in Vienna in 1930, Walter Michel fled the Nazi occupation with his parents when he was eight years old. He spent the remainder of his childhood in Brooklyn, NY. After receiving a PhD in clinical psychology from Ohio State University, he taught at Colorado University, Harvard University, Stanford, and Columbia University, where he worked until his death in 2018. Ironically, the advocate of delayed gratification was a smoker of three packs of cigarettes a day throughout his life.

ABSTRACT: To function effectively, individuals must voluntarily postpone immediate gratification and persist in goal-directed behavior for the sake of later outcomes. The present research study analyzed the nature of this type of future-oriented self-control and the psychological processes that underlie it. Enduring individual differences in self-control were found as early as the preschool years among children. Those 4-year-old children who delayed gratification longer in certain laboratory situations developed into more cognitively and socially competent adolescents, achieving higher scholastic performance and coping better with frustration and stress. Experiments in the same research program also identified specific cognitive and attentional processes that allow an individual to effectively self-regulate him or herself early in the course of a child’s development.
Condensed version of the original research article
For almost a century, the infant has been characterized as impulse-driven, unable to delay gratification, oblivious to logic and reality, and ruled entirely by a desire for pleasure and immediate satisfaction. The challenge has been to clarify how individuals, while remaining capable of great impulsivity, also become able to control their actions for the sake of future consequences and goals, managing at least sometimes to forgo more immediate gratifications to take account of possible future outcomes. The nature of this future-oriented self-control, which develops over time and then coexists with more impetuous behaviors, has intrigued psychologists studying childhood development, who have made it central in theories of socialization and in the very definition of the “self.” Such goal-directed, self- imposed delay of gratification is widely presumed to be important in the prevention of serious developmental and mental health problems, including those directly associated with lack of resilience, behavior disorders, poor social responsibility skills, and a variety of addictive and antisocial behaviors.

To explain how people manage to exercise self-control, concepts like ”willpower” or “ego strength” are common, although these terms are labels that do not explain the phenomenon. Some people adhere to difficult diets, or give up cigarettes after years of smoking them addictively, or continue to work and wait for distant goals even when tempted to quit, whereas others fail in such attempts to better regulate themselves in spite of affirming the same initial intentions. Yet the same person who exhibits self-control in one situation may fail to do so in another, even when it appears to be highly similar.

Two complementary methods were used to investigate delay of gratification in the research. Initially, preferences for delayed, more valuable versus immediate but less valuable outcomes were studied as choice decisions. In this approach, individuals choose under realistic conditions among outcomes that vary in value and in the expected duration of time before they become available. In one study, young children were given the choice to eat one marshmallow immediately (a less valuable option) or wait until the experimenter’s return to receive two marshmallows (a more desirable outcome). These choices were given to people from a wide range of sociocultural backgrounds, family structure, and economic circumstances. As expected, these choices are affected predictably by the length of the delay time and the subjective value of the alternatives. For example, preferences for delayed rewards decrease when the required time for their attainment increases and increase with the expectation that the delayed outcomes will occur. In addition, choices to delay were related significantly to a number of personal characteristics assessed at about the same time. For example, children who tend to prefer delayed rewards also tend to be more intelligent, more likely to resist temptation, to have greater social responsibility, and higher achievement strivings. The obtained concurrent associations are extensive, indicating that such preferences reflect a meaningful dimension of individual differences, and point to some of the many determinants and correlates of decisions to delay.

As efforts at self-reform so often attest, however, decisions to forgo, or delay, immediate gratification for the sake of later consequences (for example, by dieting) are readily forgotten or strategically revised when one experiences the frustration of actually having to execute, or perform, them. Because intentions to practice self-control frequently dissolve in the face of more immediate temptations, it is also necessary to go beyond the study of initial decisions to delay gratification and to examine how young children become able to sustain delay of gratification as they actually try to wait for the outcomes they want. For this purpose, a second method to research this question was devised and used to test preschool children in the Stanford University community

In this method, the experimenter begins by showing the child some toys, explaining they will play with them later (so that ending the delay leads to uniform positive consequences). Next, the experimenter teaches a game in which he or she has to leave the room and comes back immediately when the child summons by ringing a bell. Each child then is shown a pair of treats (such as snacks, small toys, or tokens) which differ in value, established through pretesting to be desirable and of age-appropriate interest (for example, one marsh­ mallow versus two; two small cookies versus five pretzels). The children are told that to attain the one they prefer they have to wait until the experimenter returns but that they are free to end the waiting period whenever they signal; if they do, however, they will get the less preferred object and forgo the other one. The items in the pair are selected to be sufficiently close in value to create a conflict situation for young children between the temptation to stop the delay and the desire to persist for the preferred outcome when the latter requires delay. After children understand the contingency, they are left on their own during the delay period while their behavior is observed unobtrusively, and the duration of their delay is recorded until they terminate or the experimenter returns (typically after 15 minutes). With this method, “self-imposed delay of gratification” was investigated both as a psychological process in experiments that varied relevant features in the delay situation and as a personal characteristic in studies that examined the relation between children’s delay behavior and their social and cognitive competencies.

A recent follow-up study of a sample of these children found that those who had waited longer in this situation at 4 years of age were described more than 10 years later by their parents as adolescents who were more academically and socially competent than their peers and more able to cope with frustration and resist temptation. At statistically significant levels, parents saw these children as more verbally fluent and able to express ideas; they used and responded to reason, were attentive and able to concentrate, to plan, and to think ahead, and were competent and skillful. Likewise they were perceived as able to cope and deal with stress more maturely and seemed more self-assured. In some variations of this laboratory situation, seconds of delay time in preschool also were significantly related to their Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores when they applied to college. The demonstration of these enduring individual differences in the course of development, as well as the significance attributed to purposeful self-imposed delay of gratification theoretically, underline the need to understand and specify the psychological processes that allow the young child to execute this type of self-regulation in the pursuit of desired outcomes.

The excerpt below is from Walter Mischel’s best-selling book The Marshmallow Test, which was written twenty-five years after his original scholarly article that we’ve just read. This book was intended to bring his theories about delayed gratification to a much larger audience and to give, not just children, but all of us, advice about how to improve our willpower and apply it to such everyday problems as weight gain, smoking, and overcoming heartbreak.

The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control (excerpt)

WALTER MISCHEL

(1) It began in the 1960s with preschoolers at Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School, in a simple study that challenged them with a tough dilemma. My students and I gave the children a choice between one reward (for example, a marshmallow) that they could have immediately, and a larger reward (two marshmallows) for which they would have to wait, alone, for up to 20 minutes. We let the children select the rewards they wanted most from an assortment that included marshmallows, cookies, little pretzels, mints, and so on. “Amy,” for example, chose marshmallows. She sat alone at a table facing the one marshmallow that she could have immediately, as well as the two marshmallows that she could have if she waited. Next to the treats was a desk bell she could ring at any time to call back the researcher and eat the one marshmallow. Or she could wait for the researcher to return, and if Amy hadn’t left her chair or started to eat the marshmallow, she could have both. The struggles we observed as these children tried to restrain themselves from ringing the bell could bring tears to your eyes, have you applauding their creativeness and cheering them on, and give you fresh hope for the potential of even young children to resist temptation and persevere for their delayed rewards.

* * *

(2) than 550 children who were enrolled in Stanford University’s Bing preschool between 1968 and 1974 were given the Marshmallow Test. We followed a sample of these participants and assessed them on diverse measures about once every decade after the original testing. In 2010, they reached their early to mid-forties, and in 2014, we are continuing to collect information from them, such as their occupational, marital, physical, financial, and mental health status. The findings surprised us from the start, and they still do.

(3) In the first follow-up study, we mailed small bundles of questionnaires to their parents and asked them to “think about your child in comparison to his or her peers, such as classmates and other same-age friends. We would like to get your impression of how your son or daughter compares to those peers.” They were to rate their children on a scale of 1 to 9 (from “Not at all” to “Moderately” to “Extremely”). We also obtained similar ratings from their teachers about the children’s cognitive and social skills at school.

(4) Preschoolers who delayed longer on the Marshmallow Test were rated a dozen years later as adolescents who exhibited more self-control in frustrating situations; yielded less to temptation; were less distractible when trying to concentrate; were more intelligent, self-reliant, and confident; and trusted their own judgment. When under stress they did not go to pieces as much as the low delayers did, and they were less likely to become rattled and disorganized or revert to immature behavior. Likewise, they thought ahead and planned more, and when motivated they were more able to pursue their goals. They were also more attentive and able to use and respond to reason, and they were less likely to be sidetracked by setbacks. In short, they managed to defy the widespread stereotype of the problematic, difficult adolescent, at least in the eyes and reports of their parents and teachers.

(5) To measure the children’s actual academic achievement, we asked parents to provide their children’s SAT verbal and quantitative scores, when available. The SAT is the test in the United States that students routinely take as part of their application for college admission. To assess the reliability of the scores reported by the parents, we also contacted the Educational Testing Service, which administered the test. Preschoolers who delayed longer on the whole earned much better SAT scores. When the SAT scores of children with the shortest delay times (bottom third) were compared with those of children with longer delay times (top third), the overall difference in their scores was 210 points.

(6) Around age twenty-five to thirty, those who had delayed longer in preschool self-reported that they were more able to pursue and reach long-term goals, used risky drugs less, had reached higher educational levels, and had a significantly lower body mass index. They were also more resilient and adaptive in coping with interpersonal problems and better at maintaining close relationships. As we continued to follow the participants over the years, the findings from the Bing study became more surprising in their sweep, stability, and importance: if behavior on this simple Marshmallow Test in preschool predicted (at statistically significant levels) so much for so long about how well lives turned out, the public policy and educational implications had to be considered.

The excerpt below is from Walter Mischel’s best
–
selling book

The Marshmallow Tes
t
, which
was written twenty
–
five years after his original scholarly article

that we
’
ve just read
. This
book was intended to bring his theories about delayed gratification to a much larger
audience and to give, no
t just children, but all of us, advice about how to improve our
willpower and apply it to such everyday problems as weight gain, smoking, and overcoming
heartbreak
.

The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self
–
Control (excerpt)

WALTER MISCHEL

(1)
It began in the 1960s with preschoolers at Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School,
in a simple study that challenged them with a tough dilemma. My students and I gave the
children a choice between one reward (for example, a marshmallow) that they could
have
immediately, and a larger reward (two marshmallows) for which they would have to wait,
alone, for up to 20 minutes. We let the children select the rewards they wanted most from
an assortment that included marshmallows, cookies, little pretzels, mints,

and so on.
“Amy,” for example, chose marshmallows. She sat alone at a table facing the one
marshmallow that she could have immediately, as well as the two marshmallows that she
could have if she waited. Next to the treats

was a desk bell she could ring at

any time to
call back the researcher and eat the one marshmallow. Or she could wait for the
researcher to return, and if Amy hadn’t left her chair or started to eat the marshmallow,
she could have both. The struggles we observed as these children tried to

restrain
themselves from ringing the bell could bring tears to your eyes, have you applauding
their creativeness and cheering them on, and give you fresh hope for the potential of even
young children to resist temptation and persevere for their delayed re
wards.

* * *

(2)

than 550 children who were enrolled in Stanford University’s Bing preschool
between 1968 and 1974 were given the Marshmallow Test. We followed a sample of
The excerpt below is from Walter Mischel’s best-selling book The Marshmallow Test, which
was written twenty-five years after his original scholarly article that we’ve just read. This
book was intended to bring his theories about delayed gratification to a much larger
audience and to give, not just children, but all of us, advice about how to improve our
willpower and apply it to such everyday problems as weight gain, smoking, and overcoming
heartbreak.

The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control (excerpt)
WALTER MISCHEL

(1) It began in the 1960s with preschoolers at Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School,
in a simple study that challenged them with a tough dilemma. My students and I gave the
children a choice between one reward (for example, a marshmallow) that they could have
immediately, and a larger reward (two marshmallows) for which they would have to wait,
alone, for up to 20 minutes. We let the children select the rewards they wanted most from
an assortment that included marshmallows, cookies, little pretzels, mints, and so on.
“Amy,” for example, chose marshmallows. She sat alone at a table facing the one
marshmallow that she could have immediately, as well as the two marshmallows that she
could have if she waited. Next to the treats was a desk bell she could ring at any time to
call back the researcher and eat the one marshmallow. Or she could wait for the
researcher to return, and if Amy hadn’t left her chair or started to eat the marshmallow,
she could have both. The struggles we observed as these children tried to restrain
themselves from ringing the bell could bring tears to your eyes, have you applauding
their creativeness and cheering them on, and give you fresh hope for the potential of even
young children to resist temptation and persevere for their delayed rewards.
* * *
(2) than 550 children who were enrolled in Stanford University’s Bing preschool
between 1968 and 1974 were given the Marshmallow Test. We followed a sample of

Summary/Response Essay

for the Marshmallow Test/Success Writing Project

For this assignment, you will write an academic essay suitable for a class in psychology, sociology,
education, or an English composition course. In the first part of the essay, you will summarize the
readings from the Success Writing Project. It is important to be clear, direct, and impartial when you
summarize. In the next part of the essay, you will discuss your response to something that you found
interesting about the research. In this portion, you will discuss your thoughts on the articles. You should
clearly state what you found to be interesting and then develop your thoughts on the issue. The next
paragraph provides some examples of what you might discuss in your response.

For example, do you agree or disagree with one of the findings or the research methodologies? If so, state
the point of agreement and disagreement and present an argument to support your position. Another
possibility: Do you have a related experience the connects to something in the readings to share? If so,
explain the connection between your experience and the readings and describe it in detail. Do you have
a proposal for how parents or educators can use the research findings to better parent or teach children?
If so, present the proposal and persuade your reader why it is a good proposal.

Importantly, your response should NOT simply repeat or restate a summary of the articles.

To prepare you should

• read each article several times,
• review the tips for summarizing and the summary you wrote of Kidd’s research,
• review your notes from our discussions, and
• draft an outline before you write. (Turn this in for my feedback)

The following is the BASIC OUTLINE. Use this as the starting point. Remember the PIE model. (You will find
a template for the outline by clicking “NEXT.”

I. Introduction
II. Summary of Mischel et al’s research (You can combine the two articles into one paragraph

or discuss each one separately)
III. Summary of Kidd’s research
IV. Summary of research described in Calarco’s article
V. Summary of “We didn’t eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us.”
VI. Your Response. (1 or 2 paragraphs). Extra credit is you bring in an additional academic

source to support your discussion.
VII. Conclusion

Please pay special attention to information about the due dates. I will explain them in class and they are
available within the essay’s dropbox on Canvas.

Calarco, J. M. (2018, June 1). Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test. The Atlantic. Retrieved from

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/

Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test

Affluence—not willpower—seems to be what’s behind some kids’ capacity to delay gratification.

JESSICA MCCRORY CALARCO

JUNE 1, 2018

The marshmallow test is one of the most famous pieces of social-science research: Put a marshmallow in front of a child, tell her that she can have a second one if she can go 15 minutes without eating the first one, and then leave the room. Whether she’s patient enough to double her payout is supposedly indicative of a willpower that will pay dividends down the line, at school and eventually at work. Passing the test is, to many, a promising signal of future success.

But 

a new study

, published last week, has cast the whole concept into doubt. The researchers—NYU’s Tyler Watts and UC Irvine’s Greg Duncan and Haonan Quan—restaged the classic marshmallow test, which was developed by the Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960s. Mischel and his colleagues administered the test and then tracked how children went on to fare later in life. They described the results in 

a 1990 study

, which suggested that delayed gratification had huge benefits, including on such measures as standardized test scores.

Watts and his colleagues were skeptical of that finding. The original results were based on studies that included fewer than 90 children—all enrolled in a preschool on Stanford’s campus. In restaging the experiment, Watts and his colleagues thus adjusted the experimental design in important ways: The researchers used a sample that was much larger—more than 900 children—and also more representative of the general population in terms of race, ethnicity, and parents’ education. The researchers also, when analyzing their test’s results, controlled for certain factors—such as the income of a child’s household—that might explain children’s ability to delay gratification and their long-term success.

Ultimately, the new study finds limited support for the idea that being able to delay gratification leads to better outcomes. Instead, it suggests that the capacity to hold out for a second marshmallow is largely shaped by a child’s social and economic background—and, in turn, that that background, not the ability to delay gratification, is what’s behind kids’ long-term success. The marshmallow test isn’t the only experimental study that has recently failed to hold up under closer scrutiny. In the case of this new study, specifically, the failure to confirm old assumptions pointed to an important truth: that circumstances matter more in shaping children’s lives than Mischel and his colleagues seemed to appreciate.

This new paper found that among kids whose mothers had a college degree, those who waited for a second marshmallow did no better in the long run—in terms of standardized test scores and mothers’ reports of their children’s behavior—than those who dug right in. Similarly, among kids whose mothers did not have college degrees, those who waited did no better than those who gave in to temptation, once other factors like household income and the child’s home environment at age 3 (for instance, the number of books that researchers observed in the home and how responsive mothers were to their children) were taken into account. For those kids, self-control alone couldn’t overcome economic and social disadvantages.

The failed replication of the marshmallow test does more than just debunk the earlier notion; it suggests other possible explanations for why poorer kids would be less motivated to wait for that second marshmallow. For them, daily life holds fewer guarantees: There might be food in the pantry today, but there might not be tomorrow, so there is a risk that comes with waiting. And even if their parents promise to buy more of a certain food, sometimes that promise gets broken out of financial necessity.

Meanwhile, for kids who come from households headed by parents who are better educated and earn more money, it’s typically easier to delay gratification: Experience tends to tell them that adults have the resources and financial stability to keep the pantry well stocked. And even if these children don’t delay gratification, they can trust that things will all work out in the end—that even if they don’t get the second marshmallow, they can probably depend on their parents to take them out for ice cream instead.

There’s plenty of other research that sheds further light on the class dimension of the marshmallow test. The Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan and the Princeton behavioral scientist Eldar Shafir

wrote a book

in 2013, 

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

, that detailed how poverty can lead people to choose short-term rather than long-term rewards; scarcity, or not having enough can change the way people think about what’s available now. In other words, a second marshmallow seems irrelevant when a child has reason to believe that the first one might disappear, leaving her with nothing.

Some more-qualitative sociological research also can provide insight here. For example, Ranita Ray, a sociologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, recently wrote a book describing how many teenagers growing up in poverty work long hours in poorly paid jobs to support themselves and their families. Yet, despite sometimes not being able to afford food, the teens still splurge on payday, buying things like McDonald’s or new clothes or hair dye. Similarly, 

in my own research

 with Brea Perry, a sociologist (and colleague of mine) at Indiana University, we found that low-income parents are more likely than more-affluent parents to give in to their kids’ requests for sweet treats.

These findings point to the idea that poorer parents try to indulge their kids when they can, while more-affluent parents tend to make their kids wait for bigger rewards. Hair dye and sweet treats might seem frivolous, but purchases like these are often the only indulgences poor families can afford. And for poor children, indulging in a small bit of joy today can make life feel more bearable, especially when there’s no guarantee of more joy tomorrow.

Mischel himself says the results of the original study are often misinterpreted. He wrote a book in 2014 meant to clarify what the marshmallow test can and can’t tell us. For his part, Mischel seems most interested not in the marshmallow test’s predictive ability, but in the strategies that both children and adults can use to regulate their emotions and impulses. “Four-year-olds can be brilliantly imaginative about distracting themselves, turning their toes into piano keyboards, singing little songs, exploring their nasal orifices,” he 

told The Atlantic

 in 2014. For adults, he recommends implementing “

if-then

” strategies: If you’re trying to give up smoking, for example, you might tell yourself, “If I want a cigarette, I’ll take a break to play a game on my phone instead.” And so, if you’re looking for a lesson to draw from the marshmallow test, don’t focus on the importance of teaching yourself or your children to delay gratification. Instead, focus on finding ways to exert control over your inner life.

1

We

Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The

Marshmallow Ate Us.

·

Credit…Illustration

by

Tom

Gauld

By

Michael

Bourne

·

Jan. 10, 2014

In a series of famous experiments in the 1960s and ’70s conducted by the Stanford

psychologist Walter Mischel, preschoolers were

invited to sit alone in a room furnished

only with a small desk. On the desk sat two marshmallows (or equivalently tempting

treats) and a bell. The researcher told each child that he had to leave, but that when he

returned, she could eat both marshmallows

. If she wanted one marshmallow before

then, however, she could ring the bell and eat one, but not both. Then the researcher

shut the door, leaving the child alone with the forbidden marshmallows.

Some children gobbled a marshmallow the minute the door was

closed, while others

distracted themselves by covering their eyes, singing and kicking the desk. One

resourceful child somehow managed to take a nap. But here’s the part that made the

experiment famous: In follow

–

up studies, children who had resisted temp

tation turned

out years later to be not only skinnier and better socially adapted, but they also scored as

much as 210 points higher on their SATs than the most impatient children in the studies

did.

I think I speak for thousands of my fellow Americans whe

n I say that the first time I

read about Mischel’s marshmallow study

—

in Daniel Goleman’s best seller, “Emotional

Intelligence”

—

I imagined myself at

age

4, staring at that fateful marshmallow. The tale

of the marshmallows, as presented in Goleman’s book

, read like some science

-age

Calvinist parable. Was I one of the elect, I wondered, a child blessed with the moral

fortitude to resist temptation? Or was I doomed from age 4 to a life of impulse

–

driven

gluttony?

Clearly I’m not alone in this reaction. Search for “marshmallow experiment” on

YouTube, and you’ll find page after page of home

–

video versions of the experiment in

which 4-year-olds struggle not to eat a marshmallow. The marshmallow study has been the subject of TED talks. The New Yorker published a long article about it. Radiolab did a show on it.

If you doubt the ubiquity of the Mischel study, try this simple experiment: Put a few social-policy geeks in a room and ask them about willpower, then see how long it takes before somebody brings up the 4-year-olds and the marshmallows. My bet is you wouldn’t have to wait more than a minute or two.

The marshmallow study captured the public imagination because it is a funny story, easily told, that appears to reduce the complex social and psychological question of why some people succeed in life to a simple, if ancient, formulation: Character is destiny. Except that in this case, the formulation isn’t coming from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus or from a minister preaching that “patience is a virtue” but from science, that most modern of popular religions.

But science isn’t religion or philosophy; it’s science. And in this case, as remarkable as Mischel’s experiments were, our extrapolations from them leave plenty of room for skepticism. Mischel’s original studies focused on 653 children, all of them students at the Bing Nursery School on the Stanford campus, which served children of professors and graduate students. The studies weren’t originally designed to look at long-term outcomes; that idea occurred to Mischel later only when he asked his own children, who had attended the Bing school, how his research subjects were faring as they grew older. So for the follow-up studies conducted in the 1980s, Mischel and his colleagues were able to track down 185 of the original children, 94 of whom were willing to provide SAT scores. Mischel, today a professor at Columbia, continues to follow the Bing study group and contributed to a 201

1

brain-imaging study of a small number of his test subjects, now in their 40s, which showed differing brain activity in those who were able to delay gratification and those who weren’t.

But how our brains work is just one of many factors that drive the choices we make. Just last year, a study by researchers at the University of Rochester called the conclusions of the Stanford experiments into question, showing that some children were more likely to eat the first marshmallow when they had reason to doubt the researcher’s promise to come back with a second one. In the study, published in January 2013 in Cognition under the delectable title “Rational Snacking,” Celeste Kidd, Holly Palmeri and Richard N. Aslin wrote that for a child raised in an unstable environment, “the only guaranteed treats are the ones you have already swallowed,” while a child raised in a more stable environment, in which promises are routinely delivered upon, might be willing to wait a few more minutes, confident that he will get that second treat.

So maybe all those years I wasted bouncing between careers in my 20s and 30s weren’t my fault, after all. Maybe my mother just wasn’t reliable enough when I was little. Maybe I sneak scoops of ice cream after my wife goes to bed because I’m still re-enacting the painful experience of losing out on childhood treats I felt were rightfully mine. Or — I’m going out on a limb here — maybe I’m putting too much faith in the power of a simple social-science experiment to explain complex human behavior.

None of this makes the marshmallow study suspect science. Far from it. The correlations the researchers found are statistically meaningful, if not always overwhelming, but even the landmark 1990 paper cited by Goleman in “Emotional Intelligence” warns against reading too much into its results. And, of course, correlation does not equal causation, so while it may be that those who waited obediently for that second marshmallow were more likely to succeed later in life, that doesn’t mean those children possessed some inherent quality that made them less prone to temptation, which is the most common takeaway from the Mischel findings. As the University of Rochester study suggests, some children may have given up because they simply didn’t believe the researcher would give them that second treat. Or it could be that some of the children were just really hungry that day.

If such quibbles get lost as the study enters the public consciousness, Mischel’s findings may also offer some clues as to why we find his experiment so intellectually beguiling. When he first began handing out marshmallows to 4-year-olds, Mischel wanted to understand how some of them could delay gratification and some couldn’t and also whether we could teach children to delay longer. What he found was that if researchers gave children tools to distract them from the “hot” stimulus of the marshmallow (how good it tastes) and helped them focus on a “cooler,” more abstract thought, they waited longer. Some children, of course, supplied their own distractions. They kicked the table or sang songs or turned away. But Mischel learned that when the researchers encouraged children to think of the marshmallow as a white cloud or a cotton ball, they were less likely to pop it into their mouths before the adult came back into the room.

But the marshmallow study is itself a classic “hot” stimulus. If it were really true that you could sit a child down, hand her a marshmallow and 15 minutes later be able to predict her SAT score — well, think of all the money you could save in private-school tuition and SAT prep. Stated like that, the proposition sounds absurd, yet the notion that deep within us is a switch that determines the course of our entire lives is so seductive that it’s hard to distract ourselves with the caveats. It’s hard to keep from overextrapolating from a study that drew its subjects from a relatively homogeneous group of children of academics. It’s hard to remember that, even if the marshmallow study and others like it are completely accurate and reproducible across wide ranges of populations, an ability to resist temptation is one factor among many that shapes our lives. Willpower can do only so much for children facing domestic instability, poor physical health or intellectual deficits.

This matters because how we look at willpower carries enormous implications for social and education policy. If it is true that being able to resist temptation at age 4 accurately predicts better outcomes throughout a child’s life, and if it turned out that we could train our children to better resist temptation, then we might be able to cut the Gordian knot that separates underachievers from their peers in the classroom and quite possibly in other spheres of their lives, too, whether it be diet, drug addiction or marital success.

Sure enough, social scientists and educators are working to apply the lessons of the study and its offshoots to the real-world conditions of the classroom. For instance, the psychologist Angela Duckworth, a former colleague of Mischel’s and a recipient of a 2013 MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, is working with schools, including KIPP charter schools in Harlem and the Bronx serving mostly poor black and Hispanic children, to help teachers evaluate and teach traits like grit and determination.

I am an unabashed admirer of Duckworth’s work, and I applaud the work of any social scientist searching for ways to improve the lives of underprivileged children. Still, their efforts give me pause, not because I doubt the sincerity of the social scientists or even because I think their science is flawed, but because I doubt the ability of the rest of us to fully absorb the complexity of their conclusions.

The voluminous peer-reviewed literature relating to Mischel’s original marshmallow studies bristles with complex statistical formulas hedged with caveats and cautionary footnotes, but that’s not what the public sees. What the public sees are all those cute YouTube videos of children singing to distract themselves from eating the forbidden marshmallow. What the public hears is the lesson expressed by the motivational speaker Joachim de Posada in a popular TED talk titled “Don’t Eat the Marshmallow!”: that the Mischel experiments demonstrate that a child who waited for the second marshmallow “already at 4 understood the most important principle for success, which is the ability to delay gratification — self-discipline.”

And there we are staring down that “hot” stimulus again. The real world is fantastically complex with thousands of factors, some tiny, some enormous, acting on us every day. Did I drift in my 20s because I lacked the temperament to stick with a goal or was I merely exploring my options until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life? Is that child dropping out of school because she lacks grit and determination or is she making a rational decision that, thanks to institutional racism or endemic unemployment in her community, school just isn’t worth the effort? Either may be right. Or neither. Or both.

But that isn’t what we want to hear. We want the instant gratification of an easy answer. We want to hear that character traits can be taught like algebra and geometry and that if you can resist eating a marshmallow at 4, you possess the secret to a successful life. We want the world to be a big fluffy marshmallow, and we want to gobble it up. We want to eat the first marshmallow, but get the second one, too.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 12, 2014, Page 44 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: 

We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The

Marshmallow Ate Us.. 

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1

We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The
Marshmallow Ate Us.

·

Credit…Illustration

by

Tom

Gauld

By

Michael

Bourne

·

Jan. 10, 2014

In a series of famous experiments in the 1960s and ’70s conducted by the Stanford
psychologist Walter Mischel, preschoolers were

invited to sit alone in a room furnished
only with a small desk. On the desk sat two marshmallows (or equivalently tempting
treats) and a bell. The researcher told each child that he had to leave, but that when he
returned, she could eat both marshmallows
. If she wanted one marshmallow before
then, however, she could ring the bell and eat one, but not both. Then the researcher
shut the door, leaving the child alone with the forbidden marshmallows.

Some children gobbled a marshmallow the minute the door was

closed, while others
distracted themselves by covering their eyes, singing and kicking the desk. One
resourceful child somehow managed to take a nap. But here’s the part that made the
experiment famous: In follow
–
up studies, children who had resisted temp
tation turned
out years later to be not only skinnier and better socially adapted, but they also scored as
much as 210 points higher on their SATs than the most impatient children in the studies
did.

I think I speak for thousands of my fellow Americans whe
n I say that the first time I
read about Mischel’s marshmallow study
—

in Daniel Goleman’s best seller, “Emotional
Intelligence”
—

I imagined myself at age 4, staring at that fateful marshmallow. The tale
of the marshmallows, as presented in Goleman’s book
, read like some science
–
age
Calvinist parable. Was I one of the elect, I wondered, a child blessed with the moral
fortitude to resist temptation? Or was I doomed from age 4 to a life of impulse
–
driven
gluttony?

Clearly I’m not alone in this reaction. Search for “marshmallow experiment” on
YouTube, and you’ll find page after page of home
–
video versions of the experiment in
1

We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The

Marshmallow Ate Us.



Credit…Illustration by Tom Gauld

By Michael Bourne

 Jan. 10, 2014

In a series of famous experiments in the 1960s and ’70s conducted by the Stanford

psychologist Walter Mischel, preschoolers were invited to sit alone in a room furnished

only with a small desk. On the desk sat two marshmallows (or equivalently tempting
treats) and a bell. The researcher told each child that he had to leave, but that when he

returned, she could eat both marshmallows. If she wanted one marshmallow before

then, however, she could ring the bell and eat one, but not both. Then the researcher

shut the door, leaving the child alone with the forbidden marshmallows.

Some children gobbled a marshmallow the minute the door was closed, while others

distracted themselves by covering their eyes, singing and kicking the desk. One
resourceful child somehow managed to take a nap. But here’s the part that made the

experiment famous: In follow-up studies, children who had resisted temptation turned

out years later to be not only skinnier and better socially adapted, but they also scored as
much as 210 points higher on their SATs than the most impatient children in the studies

did.

I think I speak for thousands of my fellow Americans when I say that the first time I

read about Mischel’s marshmallow study — in Daniel Goleman’s best seller, “Emotional

Intelligence” — I imagined myself at age 4, staring at that fateful marshmallow. The tale

of the marshmallows, as presented in Goleman’s book, read like some science-age

Calvinist parable. Was I one of the elect, I wondered, a child blessed with the moral

fortitude to resist temptation? Or was I doomed from age 4 to a life of impulse-driven

gluttony?

Clearly I’m not alone in this reaction. Search for “marshmallow experiment” on

YouTube, and you’ll find page after page of home-video versions of the experiment in