Few psychological experiments have garnered as much attention and impact as the Marshmallow Test. A child seated in front of a tantalising marshmallow is presented with a choice: have the one marshmallow now, or wait until the experimenter returns and get two marshmallows instead. Some stick it out, others immediately can’t resist, and yet others try valiantly to wait but end up giving in, losing the extra marshmallow despite their mighty efforts. What’s remarkable about this test is that the kids who waited until the end went on to have better life outcomes: higher SAT scores, more relationship success, healthier BMIs…and so on. This single-handedly led to headlines, to school policy reforms, and even to Sesame Street’s cookie monster teaching delay gratification on TV. Today, failed replications have begun to reveal that beneath the simplicity of this experiment hides a challenging complexity.
When Celeste Kidd, a doctoral student of Psychology at the University of Rochester, came across the Marshmallow Test, she recalled kids at the homeless family shelter where she had volunteered– everyone shared one big area and personal possessions couldn’t be kept safe. She knew that ‘all of these kids would eat the marshmallow right away,’ and questioned why one would wait if they’re used to things getting taken away. In her study, children were first given some old used crayons and if they could wait, the adult experimenter would return with new, nicer crayons. Some were placed in the reliable condition, where the adult returned with nice crayons after a few minutes. However, for those in the unreliable condition, the adult came back empty-handed and apologised. Then the marshmallow test was administered. Children in the reliable condition waited four times longer than those in the unreliable condition!
These results led co-author Richard Aslin to wonder ‘what must things be like for children who are exposed to unreliable conditions day after day?’ Children experience radically different views of the world based on their home life. Those who are willing to wait for the adult experimenter’s return are the same children who also have reliable adults in their home life. And the children who do not wait for another promised marshmallow are the same children who have unreliable parents instead – for a child accustomed to stolen possessions and broken promises, the only guaranteed treats are the ones they’ve already swallowed.
Similar research by Michaelson and Munakata (2016) backed this finding. When preschoolers had observed the experimenter lie to and misbehave with another adult, their wait times for the second marshmallow were three times shorter than preschoolers who’d seen a truthful experimenter. Their instant gratification wasn’t driven by a lack of self-control, rather by the reasoning that ‘this person can’t be trusted. I’d better cut my losses, and go for whatever immediate rewards I can secure.’ Studies have also found that paternal absence predicted instant gratification in young children (Mischel, 1961) and that delaying gratification depended on trusting or doubting adults.
Another groundbreaking replication done by Tyler Watts and his team explored socioeconomic factors in the test. The original marshmallow test included 86 of the Stanford University Staff’s children. Watts’ replication included 900 children, of different races and socioeconomic standings. This study showed much weaker correlations between self-control and later life success, and the effect all but vanished when they controlled for family background and home environment! A similar conclusion was reached by Walls and Smith, back in 1970: children from disadvantaged homes (i.e. whose parents were on welfare) immediately ate the marshmallow on the very first trial. But then, they were actually shown the extra marshmallow that they could get if they waited. After seeing real proof of a second marshmallow, the children successfully waited out the experimenter’s return in the following trials. The assurance of a reliable outcome changed their self-control instantly, challenging the deterministic narrative that often accompanies the Marshmallow Test.
So what is going on here? In his book ‘Algorithms To Live By,’ Brian Christian offers a compelling explanation rooted in the idea that we’re wired to anticipate outcomes based on our past experiences. Consider a child whose parents consistently return after short delays. For them, waiting is a calculated risk, an investment in the promise of a return. The longer they wait, the closer they believe they are to the endpoint – and so they can hold out, because they expect that the delay is bound to end soon. And then there are children who face uncertainties about their parents’ delays. They don’t have a sense of “the average wait time” because their parents simply haven’t been that consistent or reliable. It’s akin to being on hold during a customer service call; the delay can span seconds or hours. With no sense of scale, it’s an uphill battle – the longer you wait, the more elusive the endpoint seems. In such a case, does it not make sense to cut your losses at some point? Being successful in life may depend on self-control, but perhaps even more so on having trustworthy authority figures who are consistently present, who don’t break promises and don’t disappear for arbitrary intervals. Whether children give in or hold out depends on their expectations about the future, which in turn reveals their past experiences. What looks like someone’s irrational behaviour usually makes sense when you put yourself in their shoes.
Where does this leave us? The Marshmallow Test, once revered for providing marvellous insights into human behaviour, now stands as a cautionary tale against oversimplification. A marshmallow is not a crystal ball of doom. The correlations to life outcomes aren’t automatically causations. Behaviours are borne out of myriad circumstances. When drawing conclusions, we should honour this complexity of the human experience.
Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash
References
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Kidd, C., Holly P., and Richard N. Aslin. “Rational Snacking: Young Children’s Decision-Making on the Marshmallow Task Is Moderated by Beliefs About Environmental Reliability.” Cognition 126, no. 1 (2013): 109–114.
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Mischel, W., Ebbesen, E. B., & Raskoff Zeiss, A. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21(2), 204–218. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032198
-
Mischel, W. (1961). Father-absence and delay of gratification. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(1), 116–124. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046877
-
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. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12388
-
McGuire, J. T., and Kable, J.W. (2013). Rational temporal predictions can underlie apparent failures to delay gratification. Psychological Review, 120: 395-410)
-
Michaelson, L., De La Vega, A., Chatham, C. H., & Munakata, Y. (2013). Delaying gratification depends on social trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00355
-
’Development and Self-Regulation’ by McClelland et al., Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, p. 548
-
Walls, R. T., & Smith, T. S. (1970). Development of preference for delayed reinforcement in disadvantaged children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 61(2), 118–123. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0028878
Few psychological experiments have garnered as much attention and impact as the Marshmallow Test. A child seated in front of a tantalising marshmallow is presented with a choice: have the one marshmallow now, or wait until the experimenter returns and get two marshmallows instead. Some stick it out, others immediately can’t resist, and yet others try valiantly to wait but end up giving in, losing the extra marshmallow despite their mighty efforts. What’s remarkable about this test is that the kids who waited until the end went on to have better life outcomes: higher SAT scores, more relationship success, healthier BMIs…and so on. This single-handedly led to headlines, to school policy reforms, and even to Sesame Street’s cookie monster teaching delay gratification on TV. Today, failed replications have begun to reveal that beneath the simplicity of this experiment hides a challenging complexity.
When Celeste Kidd, a doctoral student of Psychology at the University of Rochester, came across the Marshmallow Test, she recalled kids at the homeless family shelter where she had volunteered– everyone shared one big area and personal possessions couldn’t be kept safe. She knew that ‘all of these kids would eat the marshmallow right away,’ and questioned why one would wait if they’re used to things getting taken away. In her study, children were first given some old used crayons and if they could wait, the adult experimenter would return with new, nicer crayons. Some were placed in the reliable condition, where the adult returned with nice crayons after a few minutes. However, for those in the unreliable condition, the adult came back empty-handed and apologised. Then the marshmallow test was administered. Children in the reliable condition waited four times longer than those in the unreliable condition!
These results led co-author Richard Aslin to wonder ‘what must things be like for children who are exposed to unreliable conditions day after day?’ Children experience radically different views of the world based on their home life. Those who are willing to wait for the adult experimenter’s return are the same children who also have reliable adults in their home life. And the children who do not wait for another promised marshmallow are the same children who have unreliable parents instead – for a child accustomed to stolen possessions and broken promises, the only guaranteed treats are the ones they’ve already swallowed.
Similar research by Michaelson and Munakata (2016) backed this finding. When preschoolers had observed the experimenter lie to and misbehave with another adult, their wait times for the second marshmallow were three times shorter than preschoolers who’d seen a truthful experimenter. Their instant gratification wasn’t driven by a lack of self-control, rather by the reasoning that ‘this person can’t be trusted. I’d better cut my losses, and go for whatever immediate rewards I can secure.’ Studies have also found that paternal absence predicted instant gratification in young children (Mischel, 1961) and that delaying gratification depended on trusting or doubting adults.
Another groundbreaking replication done by Tyler Watts and his team explored socioeconomic factors in the test. The original marshmallow test included 86 of the Stanford University Staff’s children. Watts’ replication included 900 children, of different races and socioeconomic standings. This study showed much weaker correlations between self-control and later life success, and the effect all but vanished when they controlled for family background and home environment! A similar conclusion was reached by Walls and Smith, back in 1970: children from disadvantaged homes (i.e. whose parents were on welfare) immediately ate the marshmallow on the very first trial. But then, they were actually shown the extra marshmallow that they could get if they waited. After seeing real proof of a second marshmallow, the children successfully waited out the experimenter’s return in the following trials. The assurance of a reliable outcome changed their self-control instantly, challenging the deterministic narrative that often accompanies the Marshmallow Test.
So what is going on here? In his book ‘Algorithms To Live By,’ Brian Christian offers a compelling explanation rooted in the idea that we’re wired to anticipate outcomes based on our past experiences. Consider a child whose parents consistently return after short delays. For them, waiting is a calculated risk, an investment in the promise of a return. The longer they wait, the closer they believe they are to the endpoint – and so they can hold out, because they expect that the delay is bound to end soon. And then there are children who face uncertainties about their parents’ delays. They don’t have a sense of “the average wait time” because their parents simply haven’t been that consistent or reliable. It’s akin to being on hold during a customer service call; the delay can span seconds or hours. With no sense of scale, it’s an uphill battle – the longer you wait, the more elusive the endpoint seems. In such a case, does it not make sense to cut your losses at some point? Being successful in life may depend on self-control, but perhaps even more so on having trustworthy authority figures who are consistently present, who don’t break promises and don’t disappear for arbitrary intervals. Whether children give in or hold out depends on their expectations about the future, which in turn reveals their past experiences. What looks like someone’s irrational behaviour usually makes sense when you put yourself in their shoes.
Where does this leave us? The Marshmallow Test, once revered for providing marvellous insights into human behaviour, now stands as a cautionary tale against oversimplification. A marshmallow is not a crystal ball of doom. The correlations to life outcomes aren’t automatically causations. Behaviours are borne out of myriad circumstances. When drawing conclusions, we should honour this complexity of the human experience.
Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash
References
-
Kidd, C., Holly P., and Richard N. Aslin. “Rational Snacking: Young Children’s Decision-Making on the Marshmallow Task Is Moderated by Beliefs About Environmental Reliability.” Cognition 126, no. 1 (2013): 109–114.
-
Mischel, W., Ebbesen, E. B., & Raskoff Zeiss, A. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21(2), 204–218. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032198
-
Mischel, W. (1961). Father-absence and delay of gratification. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(1), 116–124. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046877
-
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. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12388
-
McGuire, J. T., and Kable, J.W. (2013). Rational temporal predictions can underlie apparent failures to delay gratification. Psychological Review, 120: 395-410)
-
Michaelson, L., De La Vega, A., Chatham, C. H., & Munakata, Y. (2013). Delaying gratification depends on social trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00355
-
’Development and Self-Regulation’ by McClelland et al., Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, p. 548
-
Walls, R. T., & Smith, T. S. (1970). Development of preference for delayed reinforcement in disadvantaged children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 61(2), 118–123. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0028878
