People always use the marshmallow test as a sign that the participant can’t delay gratification.
But what if they just understand time-value-of-marshmallow. Sometimes marshmallow now is better than marshmallow later.
But what if they just understand time-value-of-marshmallow. Sometimes marshmallow now is better than marshmallow later.
I’m perfectly content with being with my own thoughts for hours, but being forced to do nothing for a crummy reward when a better alternative is right there is not compelling.
Within the parameters of your analogy, my point is closer to scoffing at the experimenters for making sweeping conclusions based on kids being able to find a single item on Dora the Explorer. Sure, maybe the kids who failed to find it had a learning disability, or maybe they weren’t that stimulated by being forced to watch a show they disliked when they could just go play something else. Even with the conclusions having been drawn years later, where the finders performed better academically, that could still indicate the non-finders were simply uninterested in the way most schools work by forcing you to be there and listen to certain subjects at certain times. Perhaps they would’ve thrived in a freer environment where they had greater freedom to pick the subjects for each day.
But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.
You've repeated the whole thesis from the article: people are conditioned for delayed gratification if that is possible/predictable, and then asserts that parents have the influence to develop that trait in kids by fostering predictability.
Or the kid is getting bored by the stupid researcher and her stupid test, and is trying to get it over with as fast as he can.
I think anyone who grew up with siblings has an extremely developed sense of how much they're willing to risk vs how much reward. Like would I eat my brother's pudding knowing we'll be fighting to death when he's also back from school ? Yes, of course. That's risk/reward that made sense back in the days.
That's actually how people with executive function disorders (like ADHD) describe it. There's a finite amount of gas/fuel/internal liquid they have in a day, which gets consumed as demands are made of them and it runs out a lot sooner for them than it does for others. Once it's gone even simple tasks can be overwhelming. Taking that one step further is the "spoon theory" (https://neurodivergentinsights.com/blog/the-neurodivergent-s...) which divides that finite resource into categories like mental, emotional, physical, social, etc.
They don't do worse in the household they live in. They do better because if they waited for the 2nd marshmallow at home then they would end up with nothing.
Better with one bird in the hand right now than waiting for two empty promises.
So many of these psychological tests are based on values in upper-middle-class families. They are not always valid when the parents are drug users or alcoholic.
Kids of alcoholic parents know that most promises are empty promises. You are a fool if you take a "we will go to Disneyland on saturday" promise seriously.
The marshmallow test is interesting. Rather than measuring mainly self control, it might be measure more or less only trust.
It's only natural to prefer the first but I think we can be trained to prefer the second.
[0]: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmal...
[0] "Delay of gratification and adult outcomes: The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning" https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.14...
Bravo! Love that phrase. Some freakonomics shit happening there...