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Marshmallow Kids
Picture a four–year-old boy sitting at a table. An adult places a tasty marshmallow in front of him and tells him he has a choice. He can either eat it immediately or wait about fifteen minutes and get an extra marshmallow to enjoy. Then the adult leaves the room.
Put yourself in the boy’s little shoes: a naked marshmallow in front of you and nobody is watching. What terrible temptation! Should you eat it? Can you possibly wait for the second one? Walter Mischel first conducted this experiment in the late 1960s with the children of some of his Stanford University colleagues, and it’s been replicated many times since.1 The results are typically as follows: About a third of kids grab the marshmallow and gulp it down as soon ...
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