Joachim De Posada Talks About Delayed Gratification

grrlscientist writes "Here is a short talk in which Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification — and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat their marshmallow."

Comments

BS.

[zippthorne]

No one is accounting for the fact that the second marshmallow may not only not be forthcoming, but that the original marshmallow might be taken away at the end of the interval, or even during the interval. Then the waiters are the ones with the poor decision process.

Why assume that the researchers are telling the truth? People who do psychological research on humans are a notoriously untrustworthy bunch.

Re:BS.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It could be that that is part of the reason that the experiment is predictive.

In non-pathological environments, fairly large amounts of trust are mostly a good thing. Both psychologically, just because trust is more comfortable than paranoia, and socially, because most social activities require a modicum of trust to work effectively(playing a game with people you trust to be good sports is much more enjoyable than trying to build a ruleset that can restrain all cheaters without devolving into hardcore lawyering just sucks), and economically, because distrust effectively imposes deadweight losses(If I distrust you, I'll either have to vet you extensively, which costs money, or be offered a better than usual deal to offset my distrust, which, just as in the more typical taxation or monopoly examples, many transactions that would be mutually beneficial do not occur). Empirically, there has been some very interesting work on the correlation between levels of trust in a society and a society's economic success.

It wouldn't at all surprise me if, in aggregate(and under non-pathological social conditions), people who generally trust more easily mostly exhibit better outcomes in school and beyond(it would, of course, be very interesting to see if there is a class of notable outliers here, either high trust people who get shafted 24/7 or paranoid bastards who rise to the top, or both, possibly the latter feeding on the former). I'm sure self control is also a virtue in itself; but it could well be that self control plus social trust is even better.

As an aside, this is the reason(beyond any ethical/moral ones) that permitting fraud and deceit and dismissing them with an "eh, let the buyer beware" is a bad strategy. Trust is extremely useful, distrust is costly(but necessary if highly untrustworthy individuals are a danger). If trust is an irrational position in a given society, it will become progressively less common, leading to higher costs across the board.

Re:BS.

[timeOday]

Yes, some have made the argument that kids of lower socioeconomic status "fail" this test because they are more "street savvy" and less trusting, i.e. conditioned through experience that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

If this is true, it means those kids are being set up to fail in life, the exposure to shifty characters is conditioning them with behaviors that discourage long-term relationships, calculated long-term financial risks, etc.

You have proposed and disputed the notion that these kids are inherently morally inferior, which is only one interpretation, and I doubt it is the one most researchers would embrace.

Re:BS.

[Alpha830RulZ]

I talked to a psychologist who dealt a lot with disadvantaged kids, mostly from families with a drug addicted parent. Her observation was that, for these kids, delayed gratification was illogical, because the reward in the future was highly uncertain in these kids' families. For these kids, it makes sense to eat the marshmallow, because the parents' promise that another marshmallow is coming was unreliable.

Re:mmm... Marshmallos

[ktappe]

The question now becomes: Can you teach this concept of self discipline to kids or are they born with it?

Whether or not you can teach it, it's definitely possible to be born with it. I recall in 7th or 8th grade I took my Halloween candy plunderings and divvied them up among a dozen lunchbags, each labeled with week's date from then until Christmas. I delayed/stretched the sugar gratification from that one holiday through Thanksgiving until Christmas. My parents were flabbergasted, as they'd certainly never even considered such a thing, let alone taught it. To this day, I'm a hoarder of money and other assets. I actually feel guilt when I enjoy instant gratification. It's in my genes, no question.

Whether this always leads to success is another question, but I'm doing pretty well.

A marshmallow in the mouth...

[russotto]

is worth over two on the table.

Delaying gratification is a form of risk taking; you're taking the risk that by delaying gratification now, you'll get greater gratification later.

If your experiences have led you to believe that you won't actually get the greater gratification, it's irrational for you to delay it. If the marshmallow will go stale sitting there and the second one won't actually be forthcoming, eat it now. If your savings are going to be destroyed by inflation, taxes and stock market crashes, spend the money now. If work expands to fill all available time, procrastinate now (or when you get around to it, anyway).

Re:mmm... Marshmallos

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should read the New Yorker article linked many times below. They are precisely saying the kids who ate the marshmallow were less successful in life, not only in school. The original researcher followed the subjects for decades, and the ones who gave in had drug problems, were fatter, had worse SAT scores, fewer friendships, and behavioral problems as kids. All this in addition to doing worse in school.

Impatience is a virtue

[Anonymous Coward]

People who are ambitious and impatient often get things done. Time has a value of it's own after all. Maybe a good businessman wouldn't eat the marshmallow but I bet most entrepreneurs would grab it up in the first few seconds. To them the time spent waiting for the second marshmallow holds more value than the marshmallow itself, it's only a constant factor of something that can be held in one's hand only providing a few seconds of gratification when consumed while time is something that cannot be grasped and held in place so is worth exponentially more. There aren't as many entrepreneurs as there are businessmen so the idea that success exists with respect to the business minded individual is assumed.

Just because some people give into what they want doesn't mean they can't at the same time be planning ahead or even finding the best of a number of snap solutions all at once to get something better. It's a different kind of will power, one that gets it's virility from impatience.

Re:mmm... Marshmallos

[psnyder]

I appreciate your stance, and it may be correct. But there is also the possibility that the behaviour was ingrained when you were very small and your brain was still in development.

For example:

• When a baby is less than a year old and crawling for a ball, does the caregiver consistently get the ball for them, or is the baby allowed to make the effort to realise his own goal.
• When a child starts walking proficiently, do the parents keep them in strollers or allow the time for the child to move place to place on their own.
• If something is taken away, is it then given back after the baby has a fit? This could also ingrain the sense of, "I have to work to hold on to the things I want".
• etc.

While I do think genetics definitely plays a role, I believe the importance of the first months & years of development is often seriously misunderstood.

In fact, many healthy and unhealthy traits seem to develop between 0-3 and many behavioural patterns can be changed up to age 6. But after 6, it is extremely difficult to change many things. This is most profoundly seen in children who were raised by animals and have no speech. Those helped after 6 years of age can gain massive vocabularies, but their grammar is always lacking. Those helped before 6 can acclimate fairly well.

This is also seen in cultural memes (such as the different body language of different cultures). Children will show definite cultural patterns in the first few years, and they are malleable (for example, if they are put into a different culture) until around age 6.