2023-10-23 21:35:07
Willpower is a rather mysterious phenomenon. It seems difficult to question its existence, but how much does it really affect our lives? Scientists from Stanford University wanted to investigate this in practice. We talk about their experiment with the participation of children and its results.
Children, room, marshmallows
“Sit down and sit still,” the parents tell the child, but he cannot calm down. Or he impatiently eats all the sweets he bought, although he knows that dinner is coming soon. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the main acquisitions of growing up is precisely the ability to wait, often in the hope that patience will be rewarded.
This simple expectation-reward pattern inspired Stanford University psychology researcher Walter Mischel to conduct the so-called marshmallow experiment in the 1970s, with very simple mechanics: placing a marshmallow in front of a child, but asking him not to eat it. And they promise to give more on the condition that the subject can simply “sit and wait” for 15 minutes. Initially, Michel simply wanted to understand in this way at what age a child develops the ability to self-control.
Michel invited 16 boys and 16 girls aged 3 to 6 years, who attended a kindergarten for the children of university employees at Stanford University, to participate in the experiment. The subjects were brought into a room where they were asked to choose a treat: marshmallows, cookies or pretzel. The researcher gave the child a choice: eat the treat right away or wait and get twice as much. After this, the adult left the room for 15 minutes and observed the child’s behavior.
At the same time, some children were not even shown the sweets or were promised something not very attractive, others were not promised a reward, and others were shown their favorite delicacy. Also, different groups of children were distracted from treats in different ways: they told funny stories or asked, on the contrary, to think about sweets.
In total, about 600 children took part in the “marshmallow test” in its various variations, and only a third of them – mostly older children – waited until the treat was doubled. Michel noted that the children who performed best were often successfully distracted by stories told to them or created their own entertainment while waiting.
As a result of the study, Walter Mischel proved that the ability for delayed gratification in children depends on several factors: age, level of trust in the examiner and the ability to switch their attention to something else.
“Your child is doomed if he doesn’t get a marshmallow.”
But what made Michel famous was not the study itself, but its long-term results. The scientist watched the subjects grow up. Gradually, he began to notice that children who refused to immediately eat marshmallows subsequently received higher SAT scores and generally achieved higher academic results than their peers.
The results of the study were interpreted as follows: if you teach a child to be more patient, to control himself better, perhaps he will be able to achieve better results in adulthood. Gradually, the theory of delayed gratification itself became almost the basis for business training.
At the same time, the findings of a long-term study that Mischel published in 1990 did not contain 100% indications of a correlation between children’s reaction to marshmallows and their success in the future: the researcher assumed that with a larger sample the correlation would decrease. Michel also noted that the stability of the home environment could play a big role in children’s success. Subsequently, in an interview with PBS in 2015, the scientist calmed down parents: “The idea that your child is doomed if he doesn’t get a marshmallow is actually a serious misconception.”
And yet, the thesis that willpower helps people achieve significant success turned out to be so simple, elegant and seductive that various educational organizations, including schools and kindergartens, immediately began to use this theory. Teachers began to practice delayed rewards by including relevant lessons in their curricula.
In 2011, 40 years after the first experiment, scientists even organized tomographic study of the brain of grown-up subjects. The study found that people who showed greater endurance in childhood had more developed frontal lobes. This zone, accordingly, is responsible for self-control. And in those who ate marshmallows at one time, the striatum, the area responsible for addictions, worked more actively.
Rich dad, poor dad
Despite the fact that the marshmallow experiment was positively received by the scientific community and the press, some scientists considered Michel’s research to be insufficiently objective. One of the weaknesses of the experiment was the fact that almost all the subjects were children of Stanford University employees. In other words, it is quite possible that it was not their self-control skills that played a significant role in their success, but the capabilities of their parents and the environment in which they grew up.
Therefore, to double-check Michel’s experiment, in 2018, researcher Tyler Watts repeated experiment with marshmallows. This time, he chose as subjects about 900 children of different racial and ethnic origins, from families with different incomes.
As a result of a new experiment, Tyler Watts hypothesized that the ability to wait for the second marshmallow largely depends on the child’s social and economic environment. A child from a wealthy family can ask their parents for marshmallows at any time, but for children from disadvantaged families this may be the only opportunity to get a treat. Watts suggested that it was a child’s environment, rather than the ability to delay gratification, that was behind his or her long-term success.
However, already in 2019 and his theory refuted researchers from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Disputes about the reliability of the “marshmallow experiment” are still ongoing. But without focusing on the magical power of self-control, which necessarily leads to success, Michel’s research at one time significantly influenced other scientific research in the field of child psychology.
Photo: Josie Garner/Shutterstock/Fotodom
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