The Marshmallow Test

Read about an old psychology test that Stanford did in the 60's and 70's. It was called the Marshmallow Test and it was all about the need for instant gratification affects how successful a person is in life.

You can read the full details on this Wikipedia page, but I'll explain it real quick.

So basically they brought a bunch of kids into a room by themselves and put a marshmallow (or cookie or pretzel, depending on what the kid liked - which was good to hear because I've never really liked marshmallows so I didn't think that would have been a very good temptress) on the table and told them that if they made it 15 minutes without eating the marshmallow they could have another one.

Turns out that most of the kids were able to make it to the 15 minute mark and get the second marshmallow. They kept the data and then kept tabs on the kids as they grew up. Interestingly enough, the study showed that the kids that waited for the second marshmallow were significantly more competent later in life. They even scored higher on their SAT's.

Now I completely believe that patience and the ability to hold future gains above cheap instant gratification is super correlated with success in life, but hearing that that one little test of a kid could tell so much about how a kid would turn out later in life was pretty amazing. There's a lot of ways to tell which way a person is heading in life, and the earlier you identify a future problem, the better - but I'm not sure if these things can really be changed for good like that.

That's not a lot of intelligible talk on my part, but it's interesting to think about - so maybe you'll do that.