Walter Mischel (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈmɪʃl̩]; February 22, 1930 – September 12, 2018) was an Austrian-born American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology.
Mischel found that empirical studies often failed to support the fundamental traditional assumption of personality theory, that an individual's behavior with regard to an inferred trait construct (e.g. conscientiousness; sociability) remained highly consistent across diverse situations.
These signatures of personality have been in fact revealed in a large observational study of social behavior across multiple repeated situations over time.
[13][14] In a second direction, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mischel pioneered work illuminating the ability to delay gratification and to exert self-control in the face of strong situational pressures and emotionally "hot" temptations.
His studies with preschoolers in the late 1960s often referred to as "the marshmallow experiment", examined the processes and mental mechanisms that enable a young child to forgo immediate gratification and to wait instead for a larger desired but delayed reward.
As Mischel followed up with the parents of the children who took the test years later, he found a staggering correlation between those kids who had difficulty delaying gratification and their outcomes in life as an adult.
[15] For those kids who had trouble waiting for the delectable delight, they tended to have higher rates of obesity and below-average levels of academic achievement later in life.
[16] Their counterparts who were able to wait longer for the treat had stark different outcomes down the road, including lower body mass index and higher standardized test scores.
[7] This work also opened a route to research on temporal discounting in decision-making, and most importantly into the mental mechanisms that enable cognitive and emotional self-control, thereby helping to demystify the concept of willpower.
[16] Mischel appeared on The Colbert Report in September 2014 to discuss his studies shortly after the release of his first book meant for a general audience, The Marshmallow Test.
Mischel spoke several languages, including English and French, and spent time in Paris, France on a regular basis and frequented Bend, Oregon later in life.