the marshmallow test

I've been reading a great book by a young and pretty intense-looking smarty-pants about how people make decisions, and last night I learned about a well-known experiment that I keep thinking over.  In the 1970s, a Stanford psychologist named Walter Mischel gave some four-year-olds the choice between one marshmallow right away, or two after the he returned from an errand.  You can probably already see where this is going.  Most kids chose to wait so they'd get as much sugar as possible.  They were told that if they rang a bell, Mischel would come back, and in that case they'd get the original marshmallow, but lose the second one. 

Most kids tried to hold out for the two treats.  Some actually covered their eyes so they wouldn't have to face the marshmallow in the room.  I love that.  A few made it fifteen minutes, but many either rang the bell or grabbed the marshmallow on their own.

Okay.  Marley would eat the marshmallow before the experimenter finished explaining the directions.  And then she'd have a tantrum when she found out she lost the chance to get another one.  She'd start wailing, "I wanna start all o-vah!  Please!  [shriek] No!  You're not whissennin to me!  I need you to let me have the [sob, sob] mosh-meh-wo!  Change your mind!"

Marley can't quite believe her good fortune at a chocolate buffet in 2008.

And then there's this.  Mischel's kids were followed up as high school seniors, and the way they handled marshmallows at four years old revealed more about who they had become than the IQ tests they had taken at the same age.  The kids who were able to wait several minutes had SAT scores that were about 200 points higher than those who lasted less than a minute.  The kids who rang the bell right away had worse grades and were more likely to do drugs.  All the kids wanted the marshmallows, but to put it simply, the patient kids were  better at using reason to control their impulses.  Uh-oh.  My sister Danielle says she is so going to run this experiment for Marley and her cousins.  We'll test Marley with chocolate, Riley with potato chips, and Emma and Owen with strawberries.

And by the way, I don't watch The Bachelor regularly, but I watched the finale last night.  And then I went to bed.  I didn't see the bullshit that followed.  But I don't live under a rock, and after I heard the brouhaha on several morning shows, I watched some online clips.  Seriously, what is wrong with people?  When he says over and over, "I can't control my mind," I thought, "Guess what, douchebag?  I just read about some four-year-olds who can."  Maybe he would've taken a bite of the first marshmallow and then tried to get the second one anyway?