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
Great, so delayed gratification kids do better on SATs; I wonder what the quality of their lives is like. How many of them learn to delay gratification so well that they never enjoy life? Sure, having no delay at all is a problem; but, as you've written elsewhere, having all delay is a major problem, too--a problem that is perhaps rewarded by the SATs but one that probably has plenty of negative consequences.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to know more about those who didn't eat the marshmallows beyond their SAT scores. Do the experiments have other outcome data as well?
Assignment complete but a bit late = 10/10