Stanford marshmallow experiment
[10] The first experiment in delayed gratification was conducted by Walter Mischel and Ebbe B. Ebbesen at Stanford University in 1970.
[11] The purpose of the study was to understand when the control of delayed gratification, the ability to wait to obtain something that one wants, develops in children.
The children were led into a room, empty of distractions, where a treat of their choice (either two animal cookies or five pretzel sticks) were placed on a table.
Many seemed to try to reduce the frustration of delay of reward by generating their own diversions: they talked to themselves, sang, invented games with their hands and feet, and even tried to fall asleep while waiting - as one successfully did.
[15] Building on information obtained in previous research regarding self-control, Mischel et al hypothesized that any activity that distracts a participant from the reward they are anticipating will increase the time of delay gratification.
To assess the children's ability to understand the instructions they were given, the experiment asked them three comprehension questions; "Can you tell me, which do you get to eat if you wait for me to come back by myself?
The participants consisted of 50 children (25 boys and 25 girls) from the Bing Nursery School at Stanford University.
Whitney Tilson, later a hedge fund manager, philanthropist, author, and Democratic political activist, was a participant in the study.
Six of the subjects were eliminated from the study because they failed to comprehend the instructions or because they ate one of the reward objects while waiting for the experimenter.
The effective delay of gratification depends heavily on the cognitive avoidance or suppression of the reward objects while waiting for them to be delivered.
The Stanford marshmallow experiment is important because it demonstrated that effective delay is not achieved by merely thinking about something other than what we want, but rather, it depends on suppressive and avoidance mechanisms that reduce frustration.
"They made up quiet songs...hid their head in their arms, pounded the floor with their feet, fiddled playfully and teasingly with the signal bell, verbalized the contingency...prayed to the ceiling, and so on.
In one dramatically effective self-distraction technique, after obviously experiencing much agitation, a little girl rested her head, sat limply, relaxed herself, and proceeded to fall sound asleep."
In follow-up studies, Mischel found unexpected correlations between the results of the marshmallow experiment and the success of the children many years later.
"[17] A second follow-up study, in 1990, showed that the ability to delay gratification also correlated with higher SAT scores.
Prior to the marshmallow experiment at Stanford, Walter Mischel had shown that the child's belief that the promised delayed rewards would actually be delivered is an important determinant of the choice to delay, but his later experiments did not take this factor into account or control for individual variation in beliefs about reliability when reporting correlations with life successes.
These effects were lower than in the original experiment and reduced further when controlling for early cognitive ability and behavior, family background, and home environment.
A 2020 study at University of California showed that "reputation management" plays a significant role in the experiment.
[27] In findings presented in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B in 2021, Marine Biological Laboratory, researchers described cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) that were able to pass an adapted version of the marshmallow test.
Cephalopods engage in "future-oriented foraging" and the nine-month-old cuttlefish in the experiments were able to tolerate delays of 50 to 130 seconds, comparable to the performances of chimpanzees and crows.
The study assessed Japanese and American children, with each child given a marshmallow or an unwrapped gift with a delay before they could obtain a second.
Additionally, parents of the Japanese participants reported having their children wait longer for meals compared to their American counterparts.
[30][31] A 2024 study extended the approach of Watts et al and found that "Marshmallow Test performance does not reliably predict adult outcomes.
