Walter Mischel’s The Marshmallow Test is a really enjoyable book. His is a long career and he has numerous studies to draw upon. The whole area has suffered a few attacks (written in 2021 but there are still ideas one should know. (Of course, never get too obsessive about details of out work as our understanding, hopefully, improves over time.) What about marshmallows and your future?
Excellent Details
There are great details in the book. A typical academic, Mischel gave his first “Marshmallow” experiment a comically pompous title.
The preschool self-imposed delay of immediate gratification for the sake of delayed but more valued rewards paradigm.
Mischel, 2014, page 17
Apparently, it was David Brooks who gave it the name of The Marshmallow Test which has helped popularize the research.
Marshmallows And Your Future
The Marshmallow test involves offering one treat now. There is the possibility of getting more if the subject (a child) can delay consuming the treat. Mischel has used it to study how we can resist temptation and how our ability to resist temptation predicts our future. Of course, this is complex. Mischel rightly notes that a child who immediately consumes the treat isn’t doomed. Similarly, resisting temptation once isn’t an infallible predictor of a successful life. Indeed, our ability to resist temptation depends upon the context. At its simplest, you must like Marshmallows for that particular treat to be tempting. (I don’t eat them given the gelatin involved but this is just noise at an aggregate level). Being good at resisting one temptation doesn’t mean you can resist them all.
Developing The Ability To Resist Temptation
Throughout the book, Mischel returns to the idea that you can develop your ability to resist temptation. He ties this into real-life issues and discusses how KIPP schools talk about character. I liked the fact that Mischel explained this given character isn’t my favorite term. Mischel explains:
I was worried when [the head of KIPP] first mentioned “character” because so often the term is used for inborn traits, but that is not what is meant in these schools. Instead, character is viewed as a set of teachable skills, specific behaviors, and attitudes — most important self-control…
2014, page 250
Despite his emphasis on learning self-control Mischel also says that we shouldn’t become so good at resisting temptation that we miss the opportunity to live. Learning when to yield, and when not to yield, to temptation seems vital.
For more on future-focused decisions see here and here.
For David Brooks read here.
Read: Walter Mischel (2014) The Marshmallow Test: Why Self-Control Is The Engine Of Success, Little Brown and Company.