“कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन”
If you read non fictions and self help books then you would have certainly heard about the Marshmallow test!
In the recent times I have come across two novels which have mentioned the test and drawn their own interpretations!
The test is mentioned in Robert Sapolsky’s book Behave and In the book called Algorithms to live by; The computer science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths.
First get to know about the test.
Before you read about the test, know that the Human being is the ONLY species in the UNIVERSE who can reject an immediate smaller reward in anticipation of a bigger later reward!
The marshmallow test was a psychological study on delayed gratification led by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s and early 1970s at Stanford University. The experiment explored children’s ability to exercise self-control and resist an immediate reward for a larger one later.
In the classic procedure, a preschool-aged child was brought into a room with a treat (often a marshmallow, but sometimes a cookie or pretzel stick) placed on a table in front of them.
The researcher told the child they could eat the single treat immediately.
But if the child could wait for about 15 minutes until the researcher returned to the room, they would receive a second treat, for a total of two!
The child could signal the researcher back at any time by ringing a bell, but they would then only receive the single, immediate reward.
The researchers observed the children’s various strategies for resisting temptation, such as covering their eyes, singing, talking to themselves, or inventing games.
The beauty of the study is the long term follow up! This the key to a great study!
Initial follow-up studies, conducted years later, found strong correlations between the children’s ability to delay gratification and positive life outcomes. Children who waited longer tended to have:
Higher SAT scores and better academic performance.
Lower body mass indexes (BMI) and fewer substance abuse issues in adulthood.
Better social skills and greater ability to manage stress.
These findings led to the popular belief that self-control was a critical, stable trait for lifelong success that could even be taught.
Recently though more research, using larger and more diverse samples and employing stricter statistical analyses, has challenged the original study’s strong conclusions.
A major 2018 replication found that a child’s socioeconomic background and home environment were more significant predictors of later life outcomes than their performance on the marshmallow test itself.
Children from less reliable or lower-income environments may rationally choose the immediate marshmallow because experience has taught them that promises for future rewards are often broken!
Other studies have demonstrated that children’s ability to wait is heavily influenced by their trust in the experimenter to deliver the second reward!
A 2020 study co-authored by Mischel and other researchers found that the test’s performance does not reliably predict adult outcomes when controlling for other factors like the child’s general self-regulation skills across their life.
In conclusion, while the ability to delay gratification remains important, modern science suggests it is a flexible skill influenced by environment and trust, rather than a fixed personality trait that determines destiny
Two other important findings are also concluded in the novels mentioned above; The first one is that thinking about the reward actually increases the frustration and actually delays the gratification! So it is opined that the best results are obtained when you do not think about the reward! The results seemed to indicate that not thinking about a reward enhances the ability to delay gratification, rather than focusing attention on the future reward!
While Robert Sapolsky states that the test is a small piece of a much larger puzzle. Sapolsky argues that no single gene, brain region, or experience can fully explain any given behavior. Instead, behavior arises from a combination of influences, from our genes and hormones to our environment and evolutionary history!
So practically all you can do is, do your work or duty and not worry about the result!
Like how virus aka boman says! So what!
Shubh ratri…
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