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What's the applicable result to this? Put children who eat marshmellows too quickly in special "delayed gratification" classes? Is the result such that all chil
by monero-xmr 4y ago
What's the applicable result to this? Put children who eat marshmellows too quickly in special "delayed gratification" classes? Is the result such that all children who eat marshmellows too quickly should give up, as their success is predetermined, or is it the impact is barely statistically significant?
If I were the parent of a child who ate the marshmellow too quickly, I would do nothing different, as the whole thing is meaningless and doesn't change anything. It's more like, "Oh, OK, my son is 4% less likely to be in the top 20% of the income distribution (according to this barely coherent theory)." Why do we spend so much money, time, and effort discussing and researching this?
- hgsgm 4y agoWhat? If you found your child was lacking in a valuable life skill, you wouldn't try to teach that skill?
- nonethewiser 4y agoBut that's precisely what is so ridiculous. Eating marshmallows slowly is not a valuable life skill.
- teruakohatu 4y agoWhat is the skill they should teach ? To always eat lunch before doing a psych experiment? To like sugar, or marshmallows in particular, just slightly less? That high self-control in extremely low-reward situations is good? Teaching a child to do basic budgeting with pocket money is likely to have a vastly higher impact than slight delayed gratification with candy.
- BCM43 4y agoSee hgsgm's comment. Just because the test predicts outcomes doesn't mean what it's testing is causing the outcomes.
- Izkata 4y agoUh, same person.
- mplanchard 4y agoLots of research doesn’t have an immediate practical application. That’s okay. It can still be interesting, and it may prove practical down the road.
- spekcular 4y agoThe experiment is part of a larger research program to study delayed gratification. It was never intended to help parents raise their children. Asking for immediate applications is an odd standard for basic science research. (Unless you reject the value of basic science research entirely.) Further, the result in a recent replication [1] was a correlation of .28 between the time to ring the bell (to get the marshmallow) and academic achievement. That's not exactly the trivial "4% less likely" effect in your caricature. (You may also wish to double check your spelling of "marshmallow.") [1]: https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/the-marshmallow-test-held-up-ok https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/the-marshmallow-test-hel...
- ogogmad 4y ago> correlation of .28 ... That's not exactly the trivial "4% less likely" effect in your caricature. You clearly don't know how to interpret correlation. A correlation of .28 is virtually uninformative. https://www.academia.edu/39797871/Fooled_by_Correlation_Common_Misinterpretations_in_Social_Science_ https://www.academia.edu/39797871/Fooled_by_Correlation_Comm...