Lets have a fisticuffs fight about it.

Actually, on second thoughts, you are a lot bigger than me…maybe not.

This is not about individual exceptions (your daughter) it’s about averages and I’ll bet you on the averages any day. They are repeating the experiments with cookies and I’ve seen the averages on cookies with kids too.

Secondly to my point about you making unwarranted leaps:

“The little girl in the video is barely waiting for the rules to be spoken, she is just eating her marshmallow on the spot. She decided she want just one and doesn’t care about another one.”

You can’t possibly know that she doesn’t care about another one. She may want 10 and simply has no impulse control. She may not be thinking at all. She’s a 4 year-old you know nothing about.

I realize your blog articles, like mine are just our own opinions. I know we all take some license with our speculations. I’ve been wondering why I reacted so much to this article of yours. I don’t really know why but I know enough to know that to venture an opinion would just be speculation
Stephen – Rat Race Trap´s last blog ..Optimizing Your Working Memory – Part I

The exercise of choice is what is at the bottom of this. And at the bottom of almost everything in our lives. The only thing we cannot chose is to avoid death. That’s the part that we’ve been predestined to. We all die.

Between our birth and our death we do have a choice.

I am with Stephen on this one,

The marshmallow test is irrelevant with the “success meter” of these kids 25 years latter, let’s say. It reveals if these kids are successful at that moment (or coping with their environment as you put it), and it implies that success is when they wait for a second prize. There is no hidden “future-success underlying characteristic” being revealed here, it only shows how these kids were brought up in different environments, some of them more disciplined than others, more educated, more compliant, ambitious, etc.

And it happens that how you are brought up when you are 4 is most likely to stick around when you will be 40.

Experiments like this are very intriguing indeed; they bring up an old dilemma:
Do we really get to chose, or the choice is already predestined?

But…

There is a but

I do think the experiment misses something. It does show relevant information and the conclusion is correct: people who wait for the second marshmallow are usually people who are better coping with their environment. The main reason behind this conclusion is wrong: it’s not “deferring reward” which is to “blame” for this, but rather the ability to create and sustain a predictable model of reality: i.e. trust that the promise will become reality.

About the decision to want the second marshmallow I can write a book

1. Read the comments and you’ll see not every reader of this post will want a second one.

2. In the video they’re not asked: “do you want a second marshmallow”, but: “here’s a marshmallow, if you don’t eat it, you will get another one”. Leaving room for decision. Their decision.

3. The little girl in the video is barely waiting for the rules to be spoken, she is just eating her marshmallow on the spot. She decided she want just one and doesn’t care about another one.

4. My soon-to-be-four daughter is not crazy about sweets at all. Giving her a sweet as a reward never worked. My daughter wouldn’t eat even one out of that plate full of marshmallows. I can bet you real SS on that too

The point is even statistically speaking not everybody wants the same thing. And the real point behind the wait is first the decision. They decided to want a second one. Consciously. That’s the first difference.

And second, they have the trust the marshmallow will come. maybe ther kids who stopped waiting and grabbed the marshmallow lost their trust. You’re right when saying we’re talking on very little substance here

As for over analyzing, perhaps

How do you know that? Which of the 600 kids did you ask?

Most of the kids waited at least several minutes before they gave in. My experience around young children must be far different than yours. I would bet you real $$ that if you take 600 4 year-olds and gave them a plate of marshmallows and said eat as many as you want, only a teeny tiny percentage, if any, would eat just one.

All I’m saying Dragos is that you are making leaps based on far less information than the experimenters.

I don’t mean this to be a battle, but I think you are way over analyzing this and drawing conclusions about how a 4 year-olds think that is unwarranted by the information you have.

I read your blog and I think you have great insight and experience. Your articles are usually spot on and I really appreciate them. I just have to disagree with your analysis of this one, but I still love you!
Stephen – Rat Race Trap´s last blog ..Are Your Thoughts Helpful?

Without a decision to really want something (a second marshmallow or a better life) nothing really happens.