067: Does the Marshmallow Test tell us anything useful?
25th June 2018 • Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive • Jen Lumanlan
00:00:00
00:51:35
Shownotes
The Marshmallow Test is one of the most famous experiments in Psychology: Dr. Walter Mischel and his colleagues presented a preschooler with a marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to leave the room for a period of time and the child could either wait until the researcher returned and have two marshmallows, or if the child couldn’t wait, they could call the researcher back by ringing a bell and just have one marshmallow. The idea was to figure how delayed gratification develops, and, in later studies, understand its importance in our children’s lives and academic success.
Dr. Mischel and his colleagues have followed some of the children he originally studied and have made all kinds of observations about their academic, social, and coping competence, and even their health later in life.
But a new study by Dr. Tyler Watts casts some doubt on the original results. In this episode we talk with Dr. Watts about the original work and some of its flaws (for example, did you know that the original sample consisted entirely of White children of professors and grad students, but the results were extrapolated as if they apply to all children?). We then discuss the impact of his new work, and what parents should take away from all of this.
As a side note that you might enjoy, my almost 4YO saw me open my computer to publish this episode and asked me what I was doing. I said I needed to publish a podcast episode and she asked me what it was about. I told her it’s about the Marshmallow Test and asked her if she wanted to try it.
She is, as I type, sitting at our dining room table with three marshmallows on a plate in front of her, trying to hold out for 15 minutes. We’re not doing it in strictly; we are both still in the room with her, although we’re both typing and ignoring her and asking her to turn back toward the table when she asks us a question.
She keeps asking how many minutes have passed, which I imagine (as I tell her) is quite helpful to her in terms of measuring the remaining effort needed. She seems most torn between wanting to continue building her Lego airport and the need for the three marshmallows. She has sung a bit, and smelled the marshmallows a bit, and stacked them into a tower, but she is mostly trying to ignore them and is counting as high as she can.
14 minute update [quiet, despairing voice]: “I’ve been waiting for so long…”
She did make it to 15 minutes (that’s her devouring the third marshmallow in the picture for this episode), although I wonder if she might not have without the time updates. We’ll have to try that another day:-)
References
Bembenutty, H., & Karabenick, S.A. (2004). Inherent association between academic delay of gratification, future time perspective, and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology Review 16(1), 35-57.
Bennett, J. (2018, May 25). NYU Steinhardt Professor replicates famous Marshmallow Test, makes new observations. New York University. Retrieved from https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/may/nyu-professor-replicates-longitudinal-work-on-famous-marshmallow.html
Berman M.G., Yourganov, G., Askren, M.K., Ayduk, O., Casey, B.J., Gotlib, I.H., Kross, E., McIntosh, A.R., Strogher, S., Wilson, N.L., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Jonides, J. (2013). Dimensionality of brain networks linked to life-long individual differences in self-control. Nature Communications 4(1373), 1-7.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Calarco, J.M. (2018, June 1). Why rich kids are so good at the Marshmallow Test. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=family-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20180602&silverid-ref=MzYwODc2MjE4MjE4S0
Carlson, S.M., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Aber, L., Schaefer, C., Sethi, A., Wilson, N., Peake, P.K., & Mischel, W. (2017). Cohort effects in children’s delay of gratification. HECO Working Paper Series 2017-077.
Duckworth, A.L., Tsukayama, E., & Kirby, T.A. (2013). Is it really self-control? Examining the predictive power of the delay of gratification task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39(7), 843-855.
Imuta, K., Hayne, H., & Scarf, D. (2014). I want it all and I want it now: Delay of gratification in preschool children. Developmental Psychobiology 56, 1541-1552.
Kidd, C., Palmeri, H., & Aslin, R.N. (2012). Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition 126, 109-114.
Michaelson, L.E., & Munakata, Y. (2016). Trust matters: Seeing how an adult treats another person influences preschoolers’ willingness to delay gratification. Developmental Science 19(6), 1011-1019.
Mischel, W., & Ebbesen, E. (1970). Attention in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16(2), 329-337.
Mischel, W., Ebbesen E.B., & Zeiss, A.R. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21(2), 204-218.
Mischel, W., & Baker, N. (1975). Cognitive appraisals and transformations in delay behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholgy 31(2), 254-261.
Mischel, Q., Shsoda, Y., & Peake, P.K. (1988). The nature of adolescent competences predicted by preschool delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54(4), 687-696.
Mischel, W., Ayduk, O., Berman, M., Casey, B.J., Gotlib, I.H., Jonides, J., Kross, E., Teslovich, T., Wilson, N.L., Zayas, V., & Shoda, Y. (2011). ‘Willpower’ over the life span: Decomposing self-regulation. SCAN 6, 252-256.
Schlam, T.R., Wilson, N.L., Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2013). Preschoolers’ delay of gratification predicts their body mass 30 years later. The Journal of Pediatrics 162(1), 90-93.
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Peake, P.K. (1990). Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions. Developmental Psychology 26(6), 978-986.
Tangney, J.P., Baumeister, R.F., & Boone, A.L. (2004). High self0control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality 72(2), 271-324.
Watts, T.W., Duncan, G.J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychological Science 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661
Bennett, J. (2018, May 25). NYU Steinhardt Professor replicates famous Marshmallow Test, makes new observations. New York University. Retrieved from https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/may/nyu-professor-replicates-longitudinal-work-on-famous-marshmallow.html
Berman M.G., Yourganov, G., Askren, M.K., Ayduk, O., Casey, B.J., Gotlib, I.H., Kross, E., McIntosh, A.R., Strogher, S., Wilson, N.L., Zayas, V., Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Jonides, J. (2013). Dimensionality of brain networks linked to life-long individual differences in self-control. Nature Communications 4(1373), 1-7.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Calarco, J.M. (2018, June 1). Why rich kids are so good at the Marshmallow Test. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=family-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20180602&silverid-ref=MzYwODc2MjE4MjE4S0
Carlson, S.M., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Aber, L., Schaefer, C., Sethi, A., Wilson, N., Peake, P.K., & Mischel, W. (2017). Cohort effects in children’s delay of gratification. HECO Working Paper Series 2017-077.
Duckworth, A.L., Tsukayama, E., & Kirby, T.A. (2013). Is it really self-control? Examining the predictive power of the delay of gratification task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39(7), 843-855.
Imuta, K., Hayne, H., & Scarf, D. (2014). I want it all and I want it now: Delay of gratification in preschool children. Developmental Psychobiology 56, 1541-1552.
Kidd, C., Palmeri, H., & Aslin, R.N. (2012). Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition 126, 109-114.
Michaelson, L.E., & Munakata, Y. (2016). Trust matters: Seeing how an adult treats another person influences preschoolers’ willingness to delay gratification. Developmental Science 19(6), 1011-1019.
Mischel, W., & Ebbesen, E. (1970). Attention in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16(2), 329-337.
Mischel, W., Ebbesen E.B., & Zeiss, A.R. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21(2), 204-218.
Mischel, W., & Baker, N. (1975). Cognitive appraisals and transformations in delay behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholgy 31(2), 254-261.
Mischel, Q., Shsoda, Y., & Peake, P.K. (1988). The nature of adolescent competences predicted by preschool delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54(4), 687-696.
Mischel, W., Ayduk, O., Berman, M., Casey, B.J., Gotlib, I.H., Jonides, J., Kross, E., Teslovich, T., Wilson, N.L., Zayas, V., & Shoda, Y. (2011). ‘Willpower’ over the life span: Decomposing self-regulation. SCAN 6, 252-256.
Schlam, T.R., Wilson, N.L., Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2013). Preschoolers’ delay of gratification predicts their body mass 30 years later. The Journal of Pediatrics 162(1), 90-93.
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Peake, P.K. (1990). Predicting adolescent cognitive and self-regulatory competencies from preschool delay of gratification: Identifying diagnostic conditions. Developmental Psychology 26(6), 978-986.
Tangney, J.P., Baumeister, R.F., & Boone, A.L. (2004). High self0control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality 72(2), 271-324.
Watts, T.W., Duncan, G.J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychological Science 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661
Read Full Transcript
Transcript Jen: [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Following on from our recent episode on the 30 Million Word Gap, today we’re going to take another close look at a piece of classic research. This time we’re looking at The Marshmallow Study. You’ve probably heard of the study because it’s one of the most famous ones in the field of psychology. Dr Walter Mischel and his colleagues presented a preschooler with a marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to leave the room for a period of time and the child could either wait until the research he returned and have two marshmallows, or if the child couldn’t wait, they could call the researcher back by ringing a bell. But then they’d only get to have one marshmallow. The idea was to figure out how delayed gratification develops and in later studies to understand its importance in our children’s lives and academic success. I was actually surprised to find that the marshmallow study consisted of a series of studies starting in the early 1960s and continuing for over a decade, and my guest today, Dr Tyler Watts of New York University, has just published a new study with his colleagues to try and help us understand whether the impacts of delayed gratification really are as large as that body of research indicates. Dr Watts as a research assistant professor and postdoctoral scholar and the Steinhardt School of Culture Education and human development in New York University. He received his Ba from the University of Texas at Austin and his PhD From the University of California Irvine. Welcome Dr Watts. Dr. Watts: [02:00] Thank you. Jen: [02:01] So I wonder if you could start out just by sending a bit of context for us. Can you describe this series of experiments that’s become known as the marshmallow study and what was the basic procedure that was used and what did the researchers find? Dr. Watts: [02:13] Sure. You had the exact same experience that I did. Jen: [02:17] Yeah. Okay, good. Dr. Watts: [02:21] I first heard about these studies when I was an undergraduate at UT, the University of Texas. I was a psychology student and I think I probably first heard about it in the intro to psych course and then some sort of developmental class. We probably covered it there too, and then when we started, me and Greg, the second author on this paper is trying to kind of sniffing around to decide if we wanted to to look into this. I started going back and reading Mischel’s original papers and then of course I realized the same thing. This was done over probably a decade and there were a series of different studies as he was kind of tweaking the marshmallow test and sort of figuring out what it was telling him along the way. So I think people first have to realize kind of where the state of psychology was in the sixties when Mischel first started doing this work. Dr. Watts: [03:10] It was a whole nother time we were, we were coming out of, of course the sort of classic psychoanalysis, Freud and Jung and those guys. So that era had kind of ended and then we were, we had gone through this sort of behavioral scientists aspects like the behavior period, which is sort of the kind of rigid rules of sort of human learning and conditioning. And then we were, you know, cognitive psychology was really sort of coming online and we were really starting to sort of have a new approach to probing at people’s thinking and figuring out sort of how human beings, what are the kind of like limits to human cognition and the ways in which we can…we were really coming up with kind of new ways to study it. So Mischel is really kind of coming into this discussion and a really interesting time and people had I think assumed and predicted that being able to delay gratification was this kind of important life skill that probably set aside or differentiated sort of what we think of as successful adults from less successful adults. Dr. Watts: [04:12] And people didn’t know if children could really do this and if they could do it, they didn’t really know how to measure it. And so in psychology, you know, measurement is, is everything. So Michelle started coming up with this test to be able to actually produce variation and kids’ ability to delay gratification and the test is known as the Marshmallow Test and he figured out that if you sat a four year old – a kid around the age of four – in front of a marshmallow and you told them that if they wait to eat the marshmallow or to touch the marshmallow until the experimenter returns to the room, then there’ll be rewarded with a second marshmallow. So basically the kid is given this test right where they have something sitting in front of them that they want and they’re told by an adult that if they can wait to engage with it or wait to eat it, that they’re going to be rewarded with a second thing, right? Dr. Watts: [05:08] With the double double the amount of, of that reward. And he very kind of wisely figured out that this test illuminated all sorts of interesting stuff about the way kids think and the way they behave under kind of a sort of stressful, somewhat stressful situation. And he realized that from a measurement standpoint that the test did exactly what he wanted, which is it produced variation, right? So some kids were better at this than other kids, so there would be some kids who couldn’t wait at all. And as soon as the experimenter left the room, they reach out and grab the marshmallow. Then there are some kids who will be able to wait for a couple minutes and then there are some kids who would be able to wait for whatever length of time they were left alone. Dr. Watts: [05:46] And in some of the trials I think he capped it at a pretty short amount and kids weren’t able to wait for very long and longer and longer periods of time. He would kind of test longer and longer periods of time as he went along. And then he also hadn’t figured out. And I think this is one thing that a lot of people don’t realize is he kind of put a lot of different constraints on the test as he went along. So he was interested in like, you know, what happens if you obscure the marshmallow from a kid’s vision, so are kids able to to wait longer if you don’t force them to look at the marshmallow right in the room; what if you suggest to them before they do the task sort of strategies to help distract them from the marshmallows. So if, if, if you give them strategies to help them wait longer, are they able to do it? Jen [06:37] What kind of strategies would he use? Dr. Watts: [06:39] Yeah, so I’m trying to remember exactly. But he would sort of give them, I think sort of ways to distract themselves. So he would sort of suggest sort of like cognitive sort of tricks for distracting. Think about something else. Jen: [06:53] Okay. Think about something fun or something like that. Dr. Watts: [06:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kinds of things that we try to tell ourselves to do today. And so he kind of put the kids through all sorts of different constraints on this measure. And you know, it’s sort of similar to the research. I don’t know if the people that listen to your podcasts would be familiar with Milgram’s famous obedience studies, right. But we always talk about sort of one condition of that, which is where the experimenter would tell the person, keep shocking the person on the other end of the line if they’re getting these questions wrong and that’s what they would do, but actually Milgram I think spent maybe 15 years or something like that, studying all sorts of different conditions around which that experiment was given and that’s. And that’s exactly what Walter Mischel did too. Jen: [07:37] Yeah, and Angela Duckworth who we’ve actually done an episode on her book Grit. She did a paper on this I think a while back now, and I thought that the points that she pulled out about why this test was so successful, we’re really salient and we call it the marshmallow test, but actually the child got to choose whether they had a marshmallow or a pretzel or sometimes some other food, I think in another study. So the fact that they get to choose means that they get…if they, if they like sugar, they get to show you retweet. If they like salt, they get assaulted, treat, but they only get a really small amount. We’re only talking about one or two marshmallows, one or two pretzels. And so even if the child is really hungry, they know that this isn’t going to satisfy that hunger. So it’s not like we’re seeing the impact of their hunger on the test and (we hope anyway.) Dr. Watts: [08:22] Yeah, and I think, you know, Angela Duckworth studied a few different samples of kids doing this and one of the things that she did was on the same sample that we actually used for our, uh, our replication too. So it’s important to point out that when Mischel was doing this, he was at Stanford. Jen: [08:39] Yeah. It was already fairly successful from my perspective. And he was sampling kids from the Stanford Business school community primarily. I think there were some kids that were, that were from outside of it too, but basically it was that community, predominantly kids of professors. So they were fairly well off kids obviously, whose parents, at least one of their parents was…had...
Transcript Jen: [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Following on from our recent episode on the 30 Million Word Gap, today we’re going to take another close look at a piece of classic research. This time we’re looking at The Marshmallow Study. You’ve probably heard of the study because it’s one of the most famous ones in the field of psychology. Dr Walter Mischel and his colleagues presented a preschooler with a marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to leave the room for a period of time and the child could either wait until the research he returned and have two marshmallows, or if the child couldn’t wait, they could call the researcher back by ringing a bell. But then they’d only get to have one marshmallow. The idea was to figure out how delayed gratification develops and in later studies to understand its importance in our children’s lives and academic success. I was actually surprised to find that the marshmallow study consisted of a series of studies starting in the early 1960s and continuing for over a decade, and my guest today, Dr Tyler Watts of New York University, has just published a new study with his colleagues to try and help us understand whether the impacts of delayed gratification really are as large as that body of research indicates. Dr Watts as a research assistant professor and postdoctoral scholar and the Steinhardt School of Culture Education and human development in New York University. He received his Ba from the University of Texas at Austin and his PhD From the University of California Irvine. Welcome Dr Watts. Dr. Watts: [02:00] Thank you. Jen: [02:01] So I wonder if you could start out just by sending a bit of context for us. Can you describe this series of experiments that’s become known as the marshmallow study and what was the basic procedure that was used and what did the researchers find? Dr. Watts: [02:13] Sure. You had the exact same experience that I did. Jen: [02:17] Yeah. Okay, good. Dr. Watts: [02:21] I first heard about these studies when I was an undergraduate at UT, the University of Texas. I was a psychology student and I think I probably first heard about it in the intro to psych course and then some sort of developmental class. We probably covered it there too, and then when we started, me and Greg, the second author on this paper is trying to kind of sniffing around to decide if we wanted to to look into this. I started going back and reading Mischel’s original papers and then of course I realized the same thing. This was done over probably a decade and there were a series of different studies as he was kind of tweaking the marshmallow test and sort of figuring out what it was telling him along the way. So I think people first have to realize kind of where the state of psychology was in the sixties when Mischel first started doing this work. Dr. Watts: [03:10] It was a whole nother time we were, we were coming out of, of course the sort of classic psychoanalysis, Freud and Jung and those guys. So that era had kind of ended and then we were, we had gone through this sort of behavioral scientists aspects like the behavior period, which is sort of the kind of rigid rules of sort of human learning and conditioning. And then we were, you know, cognitive psychology was really sort of coming online and we were really starting to sort of have a new approach to probing at people’s thinking and figuring out sort of how human beings, what are the kind of like limits to human cognition and the ways in which we can…we were really coming up with kind of new ways to study it. So Mischel is really kind of coming into this discussion and a really interesting time and people had I think assumed and predicted that being able to delay gratification was this kind of important life skill that probably set aside or differentiated sort of what we think of as successful adults from less successful adults. Dr. Watts: [04:12] And people didn’t know if children could really do this and if they could do it, they didn’t really know how to measure it. And so in psychology, you know, measurement is, is everything. So Michelle started coming up with this test to be able to actually produce variation and kids’ ability to delay gratification and the test is known as the Marshmallow Test and he figured out that if you sat a four year old – a kid around the age of four – in front of a marshmallow and you told them that if they wait to eat the marshmallow or to touch the marshmallow until the experimenter returns to the room, then there’ll be rewarded with a second marshmallow. So basically the kid is given this test right where they have something sitting in front of them that they want and they’re told by an adult that if they can wait to engage with it or wait to eat it, that they’re going to be rewarded with a second thing, right? Dr. Watts: [05:08] With the double double the amount of, of that reward. And he very kind of wisely figured out that this test illuminated all sorts of interesting stuff about the way kids think and the way they behave under kind of a sort of stressful, somewhat stressful situation. And he realized that from a measurement standpoint that the test did exactly what he wanted, which is it produced variation, right? So some kids were better at this than other kids, so there would be some kids who couldn’t wait at all. And as soon as the experimenter left the room, they reach out and grab the marshmallow. Then there are some kids who will be able to wait for a couple minutes and then there are some kids who would be able to wait for whatever length of time they were left alone. Dr. Watts: [05:46] And in some of the trials I think he capped it at a pretty short amount and kids weren’t able to wait for very long and longer and longer periods of time. He would kind of test longer and longer periods of time as he went along. And then he also hadn’t figured out. And I think this is one thing that a lot of people don’t realize is he kind of put a lot of different constraints on the test as he went along. So he was interested in like, you know, what happens if you obscure the marshmallow from a kid’s vision, so are kids able to to wait longer if you don’t force them to look at the marshmallow right in the room; what if you suggest to them before they do the task sort of strategies to help distract them from the marshmallows. So if, if, if you give them strategies to help them wait longer, are they able to do it? Jen [06:37] What kind of strategies would he use? Dr. Watts: [06:39] Yeah, so I’m trying to remember exactly. But he would sort of give them, I think sort of ways to distract themselves. So he would sort of suggest sort of like cognitive sort of tricks for distracting. Think about something else. Jen: [06:53] Okay. Think about something fun or something like that. Dr. Watts: [06:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kinds of things that we try to tell ourselves to do today. And so he kind of put the kids through all sorts of different constraints on this measure. And you know, it’s sort of similar to the research. I don’t know if the people that listen to your podcasts would be familiar with Milgram’s famous obedience studies, right. But we always talk about sort of one condition of that, which is where the experimenter would tell the person, keep shocking the person on the other end of the line if they’re getting these questions wrong and that’s what they would do, but actually Milgram I think spent maybe 15 years or something like that, studying all sorts of different conditions around which that experiment was given and that’s. And that’s exactly what Walter Mischel did too. Jen: [07:37] Yeah, and Angela Duckworth who we’ve actually done an episode on her book Grit. She did a paper on this I think a while back now, and I thought that the points that she pulled out about why this test was so successful, we’re really salient and we call it the marshmallow test, but actually the child got to choose whether they had a marshmallow or a pretzel or sometimes some other food, I think in another study. So the fact that they get to choose means that they get…if they, if they like sugar, they get to show you retweet. If they like salt, they get assaulted, treat, but they only get a really small amount. We’re only talking about one or two marshmallows, one or two pretzels. And so even if the child is really hungry, they know that this isn’t going to satisfy that hunger. So it’s not like we’re seeing the impact of their hunger on the test and (we hope anyway.) Dr. Watts: [08:22] Yeah, and I think, you know, Angela Duckworth studied a few different samples of kids doing this and one of the things that she did was on the same sample that we actually used for our, uh, our replication too. So it’s important to point out that when Mischel was doing this, he was at Stanford. Jen: [08:39] Yeah. It was already fairly successful from my perspective. And he was sampling kids from the Stanford Business school community primarily. I think there were some kids that were, that were from outside of it too, but basically it was that community, predominantly kids of professors. So they were fairly well off kids obviously, whose parents, at least one of their parents was…had...