Marshmallow experiment

Now the Marshmallow test is one of the most famous social experiments ever done. It is just under the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments. In fact everyone who I tell my topic too brings it up.

I was really glad to see my book had a short section on it and it was really quite interesting.

So some context if one doesn’t already know. Imagine you’re a four year old child and your teacher enters the room and places a marshmallow in front of you. He or she says something along the lines of I’m going to go run an errand, you can eat this marshmallow now, but if you wait till I get back to eat it I’ll give you another marshmallow. Now the small child if faced with a dilemma: the instant marshmallow gratification or wait a couple of minutes and get two. This is the simple, but telling experiment that was conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School.

They were interviewed years later when they were 8 year olds and the students who had delayed gratification had developed a range of superior emotions and social competencies compared to the children who had eaten the treat instantly. They checked back in with the kids again and the children who were able to control their impulses scored a whopping 210 points higher on average on the SAT compared to their impulsive 4 year old counter parts. Just how big a difference is that? Well it is a bigger score difference between record of those with a economic advantage vs. those with economic disadvantage. It is bigger than the difference between families whose parents have degrees vs. those whose parents never graduated high school. In fact the marshmallow test is 4times better at predicting SAT score over the IQ test. How ridiculous is that?

Also for your viewing pleasure a fun little video with some experiment imitators: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_oy9614HQ

Becoming Future oriented

I never think of the future. It comes too soon. -Albert Einstein
The future ain't what it used to be. -Yogi Berra ( i thought it was yogi bear, but turns out to be some baseball player.)

No one is born future oriented. Future orientation is created by circumstance, by being born in the right place at the right time. When the conditions are right a present oriented baby will be transformed into a restrained, successful future oriented adult.

Some of the most common ways to pick up a future orientation are: Liking in a temperate zone; Living in a stable family, society, nation; being protestant or jewish; becoming educated; having a job; using technology regularly; being successful; Having future-oriented role models; and recovering from a childhood illness.

Well looking at these it is pretty obvious why they all work because all of them call for a reliance on the future. Look at the very first one: a temperate climate. One comes to expect the change of the seasons and the change of behavior that comes with it. Where as if one likes in a tropical climate the temp is always the same just with less or more rain and u don’t really need plan ahead for it.

One thing struck me when I read the list. Brookline the town with the highest concentration of Phds in the whole country is a hot spot for future oriented people. It’s a temperate climate with stable families in a stable society in one of the most stable counties in the world. Not to mention it is almost exclusively Jewish or protestant (or atheist with one of these culturally) and here successful people have jobs, use tech all the time and all have educations. Their role models come from within the town so they must have a future orientation. Other than the childhood illness one which is highly specific Brookline people are perfect for the spot.