The Marshmallow Test
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The Marshmallow Test
VicarJoe Sun May 31, 2009 10:31 am
I read the most eye-opening article in the New Yorker yesterday, so I'm posting the link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer
The marshmallow test is an experiment where researchers put a small child, around age 4, in a room with a marshmallow and tell the child that if she waits until the researcher returns, she can have two marshmallows. Or she can eat it whenever she likes, but she'll only get the one. The test is of the child's capacity for delayed gratification. Some kids are very good at delaying gratification, others have the marshmallow in their mouth 30 seconds after the researcher leaves the room.
When they revisited these children many years later, this is what they found: "The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds."
The scientists theorized that children who were good at delaying gratification tended to do much better in school for the obvious reason that they could focus better on tasks at hand that might not be pleasant. Also, it turns out that the delayed-gratification kids were, as adults, much more successful in their careers.
Mrs Joe made the point that you would also expect them to have better marriages. Makes sense.
But the researchers observe that the ability to delay gratification is largely a matter of nurture and culture. Thus, if a child is taught to and encouraged to delay gratification, the child will do better in school and be a happier and successful adult.
I think there is a rather obvious connection to religion, which encourages things like abstinence, chastity, delayed gratification, etc. I thought too, and there was a lightbulb that went on over my head, that we live in a post-religious culture that always tells us not to wait, to have it now, not to delay gratification for a second. To delay gratification is to be repressed, of course. So, the culture that hates religion is also the culture that produces stupider and less successful people. An intriguing hypothesis.
The marshmallow test is an experiment where researchers put a small child, around age 4, in a room with a marshmallow and tell the child that if she waits until the researcher returns, she can have two marshmallows. Or she can eat it whenever she likes, but she'll only get the one. The test is of the child's capacity for delayed gratification. Some kids are very good at delaying gratification, others have the marshmallow in their mouth 30 seconds after the researcher leaves the room.
When they revisited these children many years later, this is what they found: "The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds."
The scientists theorized that children who were good at delaying gratification tended to do much better in school for the obvious reason that they could focus better on tasks at hand that might not be pleasant. Also, it turns out that the delayed-gratification kids were, as adults, much more successful in their careers.
Mrs Joe made the point that you would also expect them to have better marriages. Makes sense.
But the researchers observe that the ability to delay gratification is largely a matter of nurture and culture. Thus, if a child is taught to and encouraged to delay gratification, the child will do better in school and be a happier and successful adult.
I think there is a rather obvious connection to religion, which encourages things like abstinence, chastity, delayed gratification, etc. I thought too, and there was a lightbulb that went on over my head, that we live in a post-religious culture that always tells us not to wait, to have it now, not to delay gratification for a second. To delay gratification is to be repressed, of course. So, the culture that hates religion is also the culture that produces stupider and less successful people. An intriguing hypothesis.
VicarJoe- Posts : 395
Join date : 2009-05-12
Location : Upstate NY
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