A psychologist who found he could predict children’s prospects by testing whether they could resist eating a marshmallow is to scan their brains to find the neurological roots of temptation.
The “marshmallow test”, one of the world’s simplest and most successful behavioural experiments, was developed by Professor Walter Mischel. He proved conclusively that the longer a four-year-old child was able to wait before taking a sweet, the better were his or her chances of a happy and successful life.
Mischel has been monitoring the lives of dozens of his subjects since he started the marshmallow experiments at a nursery on the campus of Stan-ford University, California, in the 1960s. His findings have proved so compelling that 40 of his original subjects, now in their forties, are preparing to undergo scans in the hope of answering a perplexing human question: why are some of us better than others at resisting temptation?
“Brain imaging provides a very exciting and important new tool,” said Mischel, who now works at Columbia University in New York. By examining the differences between the brains of subjects who turned out to be good at controlling their impulses and those who wolfed down the marshmallow the moment it was offered, researchers hope to come up with new ways of teaching the benefits of delayed gratification.
Mischel’s marshmallows have become a cornerstone of research into what is now known as emotional intelligence (EQ), a human quality more to do with feelings than education and rationality.
His experiments began with a simple proposition. He placed a marshmallow on a plate in front of his subjects and told them they could eat it if they wanted to. But if they could wait while he left the room for a few minutes, he would give them a second marshmallow.
Mischel would then leave the room for 10 to 15 minutes. He found that about a third of his subjects would grab the marshmallow immediately, a third would wait for his return to claim two marshmallows and the rest would try to wait but give up at varying times.
It was not until 14 years later, when his earliest subjects were leaving school and going on to university or to work, that Mischel began to confirm a dramatic correlation between marshmallow munching and success in life. The children who grabbed the sweets immediately turned into teenagers who lacked self-esteem and experienced difficult relations with their peers. Those who waited for a second marshmallow turned out to be more socially competent, self-assertive and academically successful. In their school exams, the “waiters” scored an average of 210 points more than the “grabbers”.
Mischel continues to monitor the progress of his original subjects and his broad findings have entered American academic lore – the ability to delay gratification turns children into successful adults.
This lesson has since been embraced in all walks of American life. Preachers refer to the marshmallow test when urging worshippers to suppress sinful impulses. Business gurus cite marshmallows when telling chief executives to resist short-term strategies that boost the share price but risk long-term problems.
Sceptics have suggested Mischel might have had different results had he replaced the marshmallow with a more tempting treat, such as a Jelly Tot or a toffee. Many others, however, cite Mischel’s work as evidence that EQ – or what some refer to simply as “grit” – plays a crucial role in child development.
One study by Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth concluded that an individual’s IQ, or intelligence quotient, accounts for only a third of any difference in academic performance when compared with peers. The rest has to do with qualities such as perseverance, self-discipline, hard work, creativity and luck. One impediment to developing grit, another study concluded, was a parent’s overindulgent praise of a child.
For Mischel and other researchers, the question now is whether neuroscience can identify the part of the brain that processes marshmallow desire. By looking for differences in brain activity between “waiters” and “grabbers”, researchers may be able to identify strategies for improving self-control.
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Version by SermonCentral.com:
During the 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel conducted what became known as “the marshmallow test” with four-year-olds in the preschool at Stanford University. The object of the exercise was to assess each preschooler’s ability to delay gratification. Each child was given one marshmallow. They were told that they could eat it immediately or, if they waited until the researcher returned in 20 minutes, they could have two marshmallows.
Some kids in the group just couldn’t wait. They gobbled down the marshmallow immediately. The rest struggled hard to resist eating it. They covered their eyes, talked to themselves, sang, played games, even tried to go to sleep. The preschoolers who were able to wait were rewarded with two marshmallows when the researcher returned.
Twelve to fourteen years later the same kids were re-evaluated. The differences were astonishing. Those who had been able to control their impulses and delay gratification as four-year-olds were more effective socially and personally as teenagers. They had higher levels of assertiveness, self-confidence, trustworthiness, dependability, and a superior ability to control stress. Remarkably, their Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores were also 210 points higher than the “instant gratification” group!
A key difference between successful people — leaders — and those who struggle to get by is self-discipline. As Confucius wrote, “The nature of people is always the same; it is their habits that separate them.” Successful people have formed the habits of doing those things that most people don’t want to do.
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Contributed by Grant van Boeschoten