4 ms·
I enjoyed the article. Even though I've heard most of it before, I'm the kind of person that really needs reminding of the core message. Somehow it's so easy to
by miggol 3y ago
I enjoyed the article. Even though I've heard most of it before, I'm the kind of person that really needs reminding of the core message. Somehow it's so easy to fall back into the "willpower is the trick" mindset. Perhaps because it's reinforced so heavily in popular culture, as the article mentions.
The article does however, in my opinion, commit a crime in bringing up the often misrepresented marshmellow experiment as some kind of fundament of psychology. The one where a child is promised a second marshmellow if they can resist eating the first one placed in front of them for a 15 minutes.
Children make do with the mental faculties and model of the world available to them. They live in a world shrouded in mystery in which adults regularly break promises to them for reasons they can't comprehend. Once the adult telling them what to do has left the room, I don't blame the kids for feeling an urge to take a bird in the hand over two in the bush. That's a perfectly good default instinct to have before you've acquired absolute trust towards friendly strangers in university buildings.
Imagine a real-world analogy to this kind of experiment. Adults choosing to go for the double reward would likely be labeled naive, bad with money, or gamblers. Extrapolating to the general population is ridiculous. Mischel's research wasn't about that at all.
From the article:
In Mischel’s marshmallow experiment, only a quarter of the subjects were able to resist eating the marshmallow for fifteen minutes. This implies that a large majority of us lack the self-control required to succeed in life.
(disgruntled noises)
- leereeves 3y agoWell said. It's often presented as a study on willpower, self-control, delayed gratification, etc, but it's also a study about trust. And looking at it that way, it's not surprising that a child who grows up in an environment where strangers are trustworthy will be more successful than a child who doesn't. Perhaps the sad take-away should be that a large majority of us lack the supportive environment required to succeed in life.
- augustk 3y agoAnother source of error is that not all children are equally obsessed with candy.
- braingravy 3y agoEspecially those exposed to different diets.
- m0llusk 3y agoI remember being given the marshmallow test as a kid. It was so blatantly condescending and manipulative that I was utterly disgusted. For one thing, I lived in a household dominated by a raging drunk father who would mercilessly beat anyone who dared to question him, let alone disobey. So, sure, I could take adult orders just fine. But that left the question as to why. Apparently this creep expected to learn something from the exercise which made me sad. And I feared having to deal with his children as peers if he had any. They also completely failed to ask or notice anything about my loathing for marshmallows. I thought they were completely awful non food and didn't want anything to do with them ever. Just smelling them and touching them was unpleasant. So I took my two marshmallows from the encounter and gave them to the first other kid I met who wanted them.