Apparently, the reason for the ability of some children to postpone receiving an award is not willpower, but wealth
Marshmallow experiment - one of the most famous studies in the social sciences. It is only necessary to put a marshmallow in front of the child [
yes, in fact it was a marshmallow ]. trans. ], tell him that if he does not eat this one in 15 minutes, he will receive the second one, and leave the room. It is believed that his ability to suffer and double the reward somehow indicates the presence of willpower, which in the future will bring its dividends - both at school and at work. Many believe that passing a test successfully is a promising sign of future success.
But a new study, published at the end of May 2018, casts a shadow of doubt on this whole concept. Researchers - Tyler Watts from New York University and Greg Duncan and Joanan Quan from the University of California, Irvine - changed the conditions of the classic zephyr experiment developed by Stanford psychologist Walter Michel in the 1960s. Michel and his colleagues conducted this test, and then monitored the success of children in their later lives. They described their results in a 1990 study, from which it follows that a pending award has tremendous advantages, as can be seen from a measurement system such as evaluations from standard tests.
Watts and colleagues were skeptical of this discovery. The original results were based on a sample of less than 90 children enrolled in a preschool institution at the Stanford campus. Watts and colleagues made important changes to the conditions of the experiment: they used a much larger sample, more than 900 children, which was also more representative for the population, in terms of race, ethnicity and education of parents. Also, when analyzing the results, researchers took into account parameters such as family income, which could also affect the child's ability to defer remuneration and its success in the long term.
As a result, the study came to a limited confirmation of the idea that the ability to defer reward leads to a successful future. Instead, it says that the ability to wait for the second marshmallow is mainly determined by the social and economic environment of the child - and it is this environment, and not the ability to postpone the reward, that is behind the success of the child in the long term.
The marshmallow experiment is not the only study that failed to survive as a result of a recent scrutiny. Some scientists and journalists even talk about the onset of a “crisis of reproduction” in psychology. In the case of this study, the inability to confirm the old assumptions points to an important truth: circumstances play a greater role in shaping the lives of children than Michele and his colleagues believed.
The new work found that the children whose mothers studied in college, even those children who had waited for the second marshmallow, did not show improved results in the long term - judging by standardized test scores and mothers' reports on children's behavior compared to children, immediately eaten first. Similarly, in children whose mothers did not attend college, the results did not differ, regardless of whether they waited for the second marshmallow or not - after factors such as family income and the state of the child’s environment at the age of three were taken into account estimated by standard parameters, among which, for example, the number of books that researchers found in the house, and how mothers were responsive to their children in the presence of the researcher). In such children, self-control by itself could not overcome economic and social problems.
The failure to reproduce the marshmallow experiment does not just disprove the old idea; she suggests that there may be other plausible explanations for why poor children have less motivation to wait for a second marshmallow. For them, there are fewer guarantees in everyday life: today there is food in the pantry, and tomorrow it may not be, therefore risk is associated with expectation. And even if their parents promise to buy more of a certain kind of food, these promises are broken for financial reasons.
Meanwhile, children from families in which parents have the best education and earn more, it is usually easier to postpone the remuneration. Experience tells them that adults have the resources and financial stability to keep the storeroom full. And even if these children do not postpone the reward, they are confident that in the end everything will be fine - even if they do not receive a second marshmallow, they can expect instead of it to get ice cream from their parents.
There are many other studies that reveal the further nuances of the class measurement of zephyr dough. Harvard economist Sendhil Mullineathan and behaviorist Eldar Shafir from Princeton wrote a book in 2013 “Deficiency: Why Owning So Little Means So Much”, which described how poverty can make people live a short-term perspective and not wait for a long-term response. If a person lacks the necessary, it changes the way he talks about what is available to him right now. In other words, the second marshmallow does not matter when the child has reason to believe that the first can disappear.
More quantitative case study can help. For example, Ranita Ray, a sociologist from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, recently wrote a book describing how adolescents growing up in poverty often work in low-paid jobs to support themselves and their families. At the same time, despite the fact that sometimes they cannot afford food, they spend money on payday, buying fast food, new clothes or hair dye. In my own research, together with Bree Perry, a sociologist and my colleague from Indiana University, we found that low-income parents would be more willing to satisfy their children’s delicacy requests than better-off parents.
These discoveries indicate that poorer parents try to pamper their children whenever possible, while better-off parents force children to wait for larger rewards. Hair dye and treats may seem frivolous, but such purchases are often the only vagaries that poor families can afford. And for poor children, indulging small pleasures today can make life less unbearable, especially if there are no guarantees of greater pleasures tomorrow.