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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."
The question now becomes: Can you teach this concept of self discipline to kids or are they born with it? To say that the kid who eats the marshmallow won't be successful is a bit misleading. I know for a fact that I would have eaten the marshmallow at that age. However, I was a 'B' student in school, I have a good career and a loving family. I don't live pay check to pay check. I would say I have succeeded in life.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
An article on the same subject from the New Yorker.
There's a neat article in The New Yorker, about teaching self-control that discusses the marshmallow experiment in considerable detail. What I thought was interesting was that the original experiment was just to see how children dealt with self-control issues, but the psychologist realized, half a dozen years later, in talking to his children (who were part of the experiment) that the kids who had done well in the original experiment were doing much better in school than the kids who hadn't done well, and from that realization he managed to come up with a whole different group of observations and experiments. He ended up showing that there's evidence if you teach children how to distract themselves to increase their sense of self-control, you give them lifelong benefits in terms of decision-making, and those benefits show up in better grades, better jobs, and better health.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I had seen this previously, and always thought there was a flaw in the experiment...
I would have done very well in this simply because as a kid, I didn't really like marshmallows. Roasted on a fire, maybe... but raw? I could let that sit for as long as they wanted.
Fact is, the researchers didn't have a good enough budget. They got away with cheaping out on a couple bags of marshmallows instead of investing in some more sure-fire chocolate bars.
Then again, if somebody said I can't have a marshmallow, I might want it more... :)
I heard a segment about this study on Radio Lab a while back. Very interesting, but the conclusions aren't quite as dramatic as the summary really makes them out to be
So if you stuck the marshmallow on a square of chocolate and graham cracker and they are able to resist that, then perhaps we will have found a future POTUS?
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Why is this in idle? This is actually an intelligent study worthy of reading. I would prefer the NYT article than the video, but overall this should be front page.
Now give me that damn marshmallow.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
the ones who can take their own immediate gratification, while inducing others to delay gratification, and then use this to their long-term advantage. E.g. Wall Street
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).
You have really no control over the "reward". Sure you can satisfy the terms of some "promise" that you are going to get that marshmallow. OTOH, the one that's right in front of you is something that can be trusted on.
The problem of depending on someone giving you something rather than going out and getting it for yourself.
Complaint trusting people certainly can be expected to do better in a simulated factory/army environment (school).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In other news, kids who hate marshmallows do well in life!
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I could easily resist the marshmallow. I see it going like this:
"OK, gnick, we're going to place this beer right here in front of you. Your job is to..."
"I'm sorry - I wasn't listening. This beer is empty, can I have another?" *BURP*
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Washington won't eat the marshmallow and sneers at your plebian tastes.
Jefferson lights the marshmallow on fire, then lights other marshmallows from it.
Lincoln rips the marshmallow in half, then eats it, demonstrating that a marshmallow divided cannot survive.
U.S. Grant knocks the marshmallow on the floor in a drunken stupor. It's still under one of the White House sofas.
Teddy Roosevelt eats the marshmallow immediately, and asks you for another... while staring you down and carrying a rifle.
Calvin Coolidge waits until you give him the second marshmallow, then eats both without comment.
Franklin Roosevelt starts an government organization called Marshmallow Making Men, and soon has more marshmallows than he knows what to do with.
JFK doesn't eat either marshmallow, and what he later did with them, a containert of chocolate sauce, and Marilyn Monroe is lost to history.
Nixon has G. Gordon Liddy take your entire bag.
Jimmy Carter says "No thanks, I prefer peanuts".
Ronald Reagan waits, and eats both marshmallows, but only after getting Nancy's approval.
Bush Sr. says he won't eat the marshmallow, but does.
Bush Jr. eats the marshmallow immediately, and looks utterly and pathetically confused when he doesn't get the second one.
Obama notes the whiteness of the marshmallow and accuses the researchers of trying to set him up.
Very nice, props to you sir. However, it seems you left out a few of my favorites.
Andrew Jackson eats the first marshmallow and declares that if you want to keep the second from him, you can enforce it with your army.
Rutherford Hayes eats his marshmallow just as you re-enter the room, and is awarded his prize only after you confer with your panel of co-researchers.
Grover Cleveland eats the first marshmallow, but gets his second when he comes back two days later.
William Howard Taft eats the marshmallow, then eats you, then gets stuck in the doorframe on the way out.
Warren Harding is dead when you come back.
You promise Herbert Hoover a second, but really just take away the first if he hasn't eaten it.
Gerald Ford tries to eat his marshmallow, but only manages to bite his tongue, fall down the stairs, and get shot at on the way out.
I'm afraid Fox News didn't send me their list of talking points this week (I think Murdoch wants to charge for them), so I had to come up with that one all on my own. However, if you think there's any racism there, you're jumping at shado... oops, there I go again, right?
(In case anyone ELSE needs the joke explained, it's not implying that Obama is racist; it's implying that he's might be so concerned with image that he's afraid a black politician eating a white marshmallow would be read the wrong way, and paranoid enough to think that he's being given the marshmallow specifically for that purpose. Of course, considering Fox News, were the situation to come up he might actually be right.)