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The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning

519 points by superposeur 2y ago

superposeur 2y ago
Thank god, as I love marshmallows and instant gratification.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  I submit to you that marshmallows are incompatible with instant gratification, because they're only good when you slowly toast them over a fire until browned on all sides. Cold marshmallows (or marshmallows shoved in the fire and then blown out) are just sad and not worth the calories.
  - atonse 2y ago
    If you added that (offer them marshmallows and a way to toast them), all you've done with that test is identify the foodies :-) (I 100% agree with you about them being toasted)
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    They are also good baked with cereal to produce a sweet bar.
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      Touche. That is a good use for them as well.
dudeinjapan 2y ago
They only measured the subjects' "adult" life outcomes at age 26. Perhaps the researchers were rushing to publish and unwilling to wait long enough for the effect to replicate.
- Veen 2y ago
  Or perhaps there is no effect.
  - error_logic 2y ago
    Or perhaps economic mobility has stagnated and external factors dominate.
    - wonnage 2y ago
      fixing the structural problems in the economy is so boring, let's blame the marshmallows
m3kw9 2y ago
Maybe when they grow up some of them learned to steer away from instant gratification. Or maybe you need to account for how big luck is in the success in life
influx 2y ago
Have any famous psychological tests replicated?
- dommer 2y ago
  https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/ten-famous-psychology-findings-have-been-difficult-replicate https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/ten-famous-psychology... Tricky subject by all accounts
- acover 2y ago
  .
  - Noumenon72 2y ago
    You can't answer "Have any famous tests replicated?" with "out of 100 studies from the year 2008, 36% replicated" unless one of those studies was actually famous.
    - exe34 2y ago
      > You can't answer Only if you're a frequentist. A Bayesian would see evidence that studies in general fail to replicate, and thus have a better prior for famous ones than 50:50.
      - layer8 2y ago
        As an aside, such lines of argument regarding credence are not in any way incompatible with frequentism. Few frequentists deny the correctness of Bayes’ theorem.
    - acover 2y ago
      True, I'm not going to read through the list and decide if any of them are famous for him.
      - fragmede 2y ago
vvpan 2y ago
Yet another study that "explains it" turns out to be false. Good.
- error_logic 2y ago
  Failure to replicate could happen for any number of reasons. The sample populations might not enjoy marshmallows the same way! But, yes, good to be aware of the possibility of both false positives and false negatives.
  - vvpan 2y ago
    In general the original study felt like a more widely accepted Myers-Briggs of sorts. But as always happens with people and personality related theories the reality is either "more complicated" at best or the theory is outright false.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  I don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed promising turned out to be false. The goal is to have explanations of the world, after all. It's better to have learned that something is false than to go on believing the falsehood, but better still is to have something true which explains things.
  - karaterobot 2y ago
    > don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed promising turned out to be false. It is definitely a good thing. It is good that the conclusions of a study that was demonstrated to be unsound have been replaced by those of a better study. If some even better study comes along later and replaces this one, that'll be good too. We now know more. It's not fun or convenient, but is generally aligned with the direction science should go. If people who've made decisions based on their understanding of the results of this study, it's good that they'll no longer labor under a delusion, and can potentially make better decisions. Good in the sense that hard things which make us incrementally better are good.
jti107 2y ago
anedotally this has held up in my social group. the people that i grew up with and went to school with...the ones that could delay instant gratification and had long term goals ended up doing pretty well in life. the ones that didnt have any plans and just went with the flow did poorly and just getting by. also in my life i notice a big difference in performance from when i had goals/vision for my life vs. going through the motions. IMO i think you need to have goals/vision/standards for all the important areas in your life (hobbies,partner,career,family,relationships)
- wonnage 2y ago
  the confirmation bias is biasing
- haliskerbas 2y ago
  Could go either way in my social group. Some folks hit ivy and then ended up at mediocre tech jobs anyway, others hit ivy and struggling to find work. Others went with the flow and still made it to the same mediocre tech jobs. And the ones who failed through school and barely made it through community college have successful small businesses because they were charting their own path the whole time.
  - charlie0 2y ago
    > And the ones who failed through school and barely made it through community college have successful small businesses because they were charting their own path the whole time. By definition, it sounds like these folk were able to delay gratification quite well.
    - haliskerbas 2y ago
      Maybe it depends on how you look at it? If gratification is "working on my side project instead of finishing homework due tomorrow" then it wasn't delayed much, they were gratified the whole dang time!
  - kenjackson 2y ago
jpwagner 2y ago
Think of the marshmallow test as a short story by a famous author. It rings with truth, but it's not "science".
- jessekv 2y ago
  "Ringing true" is in the telling. For example, you could imagine a long Paul Graham post framing the 1-'shmallow child as shrewd and decisive, grabbing a quick snack and keeping moving, whereas the 2-'shmallow child is passive and entitled.
nineplay 2y ago
I was talking about this a few weeks ago and realized I would eat the damn marshmallow. Researchers do not act in good faith. Maybe they're testing me for delayed gratification. Maybe they're measuring my anxiety levels as I wait for someone to come back with a promised reward. Maybe they want to know how angry I'd get if they come back and said they were out of marshmallows - or come back and flat out ate the marshmallow in front of me. A lot of researchers would happily trick me into thinking I was killing someone if they thought they could get away with it. Its the truth that demolishes all the hand-waving about the marshmallow test - it relies on the subject's trust of the person running the experiment. I wouldn't trust them, why should anyone else? When evaluated that way - particularly when testing on children - the outcome is painfully predictable. - Children who have adults in life that they trust have better outcomes. - Children who do not have adults in their lives who they trust have worse outcomes.
- RRWagner 2y ago
  I was a subject in a college psychology experiment when I was an undergrad. The researcher said I would get some amount of $ for each new word in a sequence that I could correctly remember and repeat without error. I mentally made up a story and added each new word to the story. At the end they said that I remembered too many words, more than they had ever anticipated, it was too much $ for them to pay and gave me $5. Later I wondered whether the real experiment was about reacting to being tricked.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    Just remember that the reason why Ted Kazinsky said he bombed the federal government was because he was subjected to MK Ultra experiments in college. I'd say you got a good deal getting two dollars instead of life long trauma.
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      This has been theorized by his brother and others, but I'm not sure he ever claimed that. He wrote a lot of words in a pretty famous document as to why he bombed his targets, none of which were federal government targets.
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rolph 2y ago
when marshmallow tested, i spit on my marshmallow, when asked why i explained "now noone will want that one", "now i get two marshmallows because i waited" , "and also a third one cause only i will want it"
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
Found this article whilst looking for more details, the same results seem to have been reported for several years, including following the subjects into middle age: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmallow-tests-predictive-powers/ https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmal... > As the researchers predicted, the study finds only a tiny correlation between marshmallow test times and midlife capital formation. A graduate’s score on the self-regulation index was, however, modestly predictive of their middle-age capital formation, the study finds.
suzzer99 2y ago
I've always suspected the marshmallow test measures desire to please the researcher more than anything else. I'm supposed to sit here and stare at this marshmallow for some indeterminate amount of time, just to get one more marshmallow? Offer me a whole bag and we'll talk. Otherwise, you're wasting my time. My marshmallow would be gone before they could finish explaining the task.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  I've eaten a bag of marshmallows today while coding till 4am on a Friday night. Your proxy tests for self control have no power here.
- fragmede 2y ago
  My parents bringing me in, saying researcher is from a big name university and is very smart and do what he says, is going to have a much different effect on me than my step dad coming late to pick me up because my mom dumped me on his lap last minute because she has a new boyfriend and doesn't have time for me now and also my step dad says university is stupid and for geeks and don't believe a word the stupid college girl tells me to, is going to have a biasing effect on the kid!
charlie0 2y ago
Maybe tempting children with marshmallows is a bad proxy for testing delayed gratification, but the thesis about being able to delay gratification leading to success seems to be true as far as I can tell. Anecdotally, all the people I know who can't delay gratification are just scraping by (this includes another SWE who earns a decent amount but is rather impulsive). All those I know who can delay it are doing great.
veggieroll 2y ago
I don't like marshmellows.
- rolph 2y ago
  Zira : Because I loathe bananas! https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=G3Phb8AyrxE https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=G3Phb8AyrxE
jmugan 2y ago
It's funny. When you first do work, you want the experiment to satisfy your hypothesis. When you are building on work, you also want the replication to succeed. But when it is a famous result like this, you actually want it to fail so people talk about your result. There are uncountable ways that these experiments can be unconsciously and subtly affected by the desire of the experimenter. As an aside, I believe one interesting confounder in the marshmallow test is that it tests more (or at least as much) the subject's trust that the eventual reward will actually be given as it does the subject's ability to wait for the reward. So if you live in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just eat it.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I recall that your confounder was used as an explanation to wave away the air reproducibility of the marshmallow test, but I do not recall anyone actually ever testing that. This recent article seems to indicate that it's all just horse feathers and so you can make up any confounder you want to explain it away...
- cryptoegorophy 2y ago
  As someone who lived in “unpredictable environment “ in the 90s in Russia the correct statement would be: So if you live in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just move to a predictable environment. I saw a lot more people saving for the future rather than spending it all, which I surprisingly found the other way around in Canada, which is a predictable environment.
  - zanellato19 2y ago
    > As someone who lived in “unpredictable environment “ in the 90s in Russia the correct statement would be: So if you live in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just move to a predictable environment. I think _everyone_ would take that opportunity if it was presented. Or at least most people.
  - jkolio 2y ago
    Your environment was predictable, in that savings up enough would likely give you the option to move out. There are places where saving up enough money to leave your unpredictable environment unpredictably ends with you drowned in the Mediterranean, or in limbo short of your intended destination, or shipped back to where you spent so long trying to leave, in addition to the "success" case.
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luketheobscure 2y ago
An alternative interpretation of the Marshmallow Test is that it is a measurement of trust as much as it is of self control. If you don't believe that the researchers are going to give you the two marshmallows, then you're not going to wait.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Or, that it's complete nonsense with no predictability whatsoever so you can make of it what you want
  - chairhairair 2y ago
    I suspect (or hope) that many professional psychologists are beginning to doubt that data acquired in these contrived laboratory settings can provide a window into actual human behavior at all.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    Could be completely random how the kid feels that day and how much they like marshmallows in the first place.
- layer8 2y ago
  And low trust in researchers would explain low incentive for academic achievements. ;)
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Seems like this needs repeated test. Where for a few first rounds there is no reward for later...
- smegger001 2y ago
  or a second marshmallow isn't all that appealing. if offer one now or two later i might pick one now because i don't want two.
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rahimnathwani 2y ago
The findings of the original study were called into question by a larger 2018 study[0]. The original study had 90 students. Some folks did a study with 900 people. They found the same correlation that the original study did. But when they controlled for household income, they found most of the correlation disappeared. The obvious conclusion is that household income is a predictor of both: - inability to delay gratification, and - higher academic achievement This makes sense when you consider that someone growing up in a poor household may have both: - less reliable/continuous/predictable access to material things, meaning they would rationally seize immediate opportunities rather than taking the risk of a larger future opportunity, and - less academic support Now, this new study (OP) goes even further, finding that the correlation itself is weak. [0] Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159-1177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661 https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661
- Squeeeez 2y ago
  The obvious conclusion is not that obvious. You can have genetic traits which affect self-control, for example.
  - planb 2y ago
    It doesn’t even have to be genetic. Parents which are able to raise their children to be functioning adults probably were raised by functioning adults and were able to find a job that leads to higher household income. We‘re talking about statistics here, so outliers are not relevant. Unfortunately this often prevents lots of meaningful discussions, because that would imply that a) it’s not just „you need to work hard to be successful“ (which one side of the political spectrum does not like to hear) and b) where and how you grew up is very predictive of how capable you are (which the other side does not like to hear).
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
      In regards to a and b, wouldn't someone who thinks the former likely be someone who also thinks the latter? Those don't seem contradictory and, indeed, one is a possible explanation of the other.
yodon 2y ago
I can speak to this test a bit from experience: as a very young child, I was in a pilot study used to design a large longitudinal study, and my younger sibling was in that large longitudinal study. At about age 4, I ended up literally maxing out the delayed gratification test and being sent home with a ridiculously large bag of M&M's, much to this dismay of my mom. With that as context, I wonder whether some of the changes/lack of reproducibility are actually measures of decreasing economic mobility and economic agency within the US. Early studies on ability to delay gratification were done during the favorable economic conditions baby boomers grew up in. More recent studies were done in eras with far less economic mobility. It's quite likely you'd see a smaller effect today, not because the impact isn't there, but because it's so much harder today to make a significant upward change in your economic status.
- erichocean 2y ago
  Good points.
dekhn 2y ago
Many details of this particular experiment made me greatly reduce my confidence and interest in social science. I was trained up in quantitative biology- and when I look at studies like this, I see a long list of "things that could go wrong, leading the investigator to falsely conclude their hypothesis is true". But in this case, I think the investigator actually didn't care enough about doing high quality research- they simply started with a moral belief/value judgement and ran an experiment and chose to interpret the results to support their "hypothesis". And the nature of social science is such that it's really hard to truly run an "honest experiment".
- swatcoder 2y ago
  You can read over a hundred years of extensive, exhaustive criticism of most social "sciences" for exactly that reason, and many of us grew up with a categorical understanding of a difference between "hard" material sciences like physics and chemistry and "soft" sciences like social sciences and many subdomains of biology and medicine. But that distinction has largely fallen out of the zeitgeist and many people now just take anything ever published in a "scientific journal" as sound. It represents a huge regression in scientific literacy among the public and sets us up for people becoming increasingly skeptical of "hard science" conclusions because so much of what they've incorrectly come to accept as science never really was.
  - tash9 2y ago
    True but there has been a movement towards replicating these high profile findings in the soft sciences. Hopefully that will gain more traction as a lot of the "newsworthy" studies are forced to get retracted after failing to replicate.
  - newaccount74 2y ago
    > people becoming increasingly skeptical of "hard science" conclusions A big problem is that "hard science" conclusions often only apply to very specific circumstances, but scientists and the general public then extrapolate to more generic situations. The consequence is that a lot of things that are supposedly based on "hard science" aren't really proven at all, it's just someone making educated guesses.
WhitneyLand 2y ago
So in a nutshell, one of the greatest failings of science in history comes down to, researchers were under pressure so they caved and compromise their ethics and morals. Even worse, the replication crisis is only one reason that the public has continued to lose faith in science in the post truth era. It’s also the disinformation campaigns that set out to attack whatever’s in a groups interest whether it be politics or the environment. Maybe the coup de grâce will be social media which encapsulates people into bubbles seemingly impenetrable to the truth.
- nyrikki 2y ago
  This result could happen without any intentional conduct, so ironically you may have made a similar error as the original researchers. While there are very real issues about reproducibility and motivation, rarely do studies actually claim what pop science puts in the headlines. Popper has a better approach with the idea that evidence cannot establish a scientific hypothesis, it can only “falsify” it. It is actually how we write computer programs in the modern era too. The Scientific realism camp is committed to a literal interpretation of scientific claims about the world, but others like myself consider it confusing the map for the territory. But that is the realm of philosophy and not science. While the time scale and wasted effort from the flawed original paper is regrettable, this is the process working in the long run. This paper's falsification is the process working, irrespective of some claims of 'ethics and morals' Studies about humans will always be subject to problems, exactly because of ethics and morals, e.g the tuskegee experiments.
  - WhitneyLand 2y ago
    Of course it’s not all intentional. And it may not even be unethical by their standards as far as certain kinds of p-value hacking are allowed and journals are sometimes are hesitant to call out problems. But there’s been a huge amount of questionable behavior and there has to be personal responsibility with that. It’s not an overstatement to call this part of one of the biggest failures of science in history, and you can’t just sweep that under the rug as unintentional. As far as pop science I’m not addressing that but those sins don’t exonerate everything else. I don’t get what you mean about Popper either, he likely would’ve been all over the reproduceability crisis and calling out integrity as a key issue. Yes, science is self-correcting and things have definitely started to improve after learning from all of this. But the damage has been done. at the time when we need science, the most it’s been discarded by a significant part of the population.
PaulHoule 2y ago
I'd like to see the 2024 version where the kid who got two marshmallows is fat and the one who didn't want any marshmallows at all is skinny.
- reginald78 2y ago
  Funny interpretation. The single marshmallow kid derided for having no self control or ability to delay gratification was actually harnessing the offered deal as a form portion control to maintain a healthy weight.
paganel 2y ago
By this point all the normal people have started ignoring this type of “science”, many of us were ignoring it from the very beginning. Too bad that this quackery has already made its way into many States’ apparatuses, see the obsession about the nudge thing, for example.
bell-cot 2y ago
Imagined childish reasoning: I could eat one marshmallow now, and hopefully finish this stupidboringweird test sooner and go home. Or I could be stuck here longer, for one crappy little marshmallow, showing that I know how to play a stupid suck-up little teacher's pet.
- trallnag 2y ago
  How is this childish reasoning?
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    No interest in gaming the test, to make himself look better to grown-ups. Obviously short attention span. And no filter on his emotions. (Which is not to say that it's wrong. Unless you're at serious risk of starvation, a marshmallow is only a feeble token reward.)
aqsalose 2y ago
From abstract (article is paywalled) >Although modest bivariate associations were detected with educational attainment (r = .17) and body mass index (r = −.17), almost all regression-adjusted coefficients were nonsignificant. No clear pattern of moderation was detected between delay of gratification and either socioeconomic status or sex. Results indicate that Marshmallow Test performance does not reliably predict adult outcomes. I guess the question is whether the covariates that were adjusted for in the regression are true confounders and not, say, something caused by ability to delay gratification.
- aantthony 2y ago
  That’s what I thought too. For example if they “control” for factors like IQ or social economic status, then the correlations will be reduced. This isn’t a surprise unless you think the delay of gratification is itself the cause of success (seems like a straw man so they can claim to “challenge” the original study) There is more info from one of the authors here which includes the preregistration document: https://x.com/jess_sperber/status/1818100487964496119 https://x.com/jess_sperber/status/1818100487964496119 Edit: Also, I think the associations of 0.17 prove the title is false
FredPret 2y ago
Some fields of study will always be art, not science. Literature, art, human psychology. A good writer, artist, or therapist can make a truly great contribution. But they cannot conduct disciplined experiments and establish truth numerically. And that is OK. What is not OK is the cabal of academic psychologists who don’t even know that they’re full of shit because they aren’t trained in any of the numerical / “hard” disciplines. (Hard as in well-defined, not difficult).
Banditoz 2y ago
I'm confused. How do you access the full text of the article? Why is it behind a $15 charge?
- fragmede 2y ago
  why do you expect it for free? what is a reasonable charge, in your eyes?why is that charge reasonable and $15 isn't?
  - Banditoz 2y ago
    I don't know. Usually I see arxiv posted a lot here, and I can access those without issue. If I do pay, do the authors of the paper get my money?
    - ska 2y ago
      > If I do pay, do the authors of the paper get my money? In general, no.
  - KerryJones 2y ago
    Because there is usually an effort in HN to post non-paywalled links.
- deleted 2y ago
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- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Sadly Shy-Blub is cucked too, doesn't have it...
dfedbeef 2y ago
That test was already broken a decade ago by Kidd. The socioeconomic part of it is BS and has been known to be for a while.
lawlessone 2y ago
Try it on shareholders.
- photonthug 2y ago
  This is actually a really great point. If successful people can delay gratification, how do we explain enshittification generally? Running a good company into the ground while enjoying temporary gains is not delayed gratification, and yet the people that are in charge of such things are successful by other metrics (Ivy League, ceo, etc). It’s the marshmallow writ large which is pretty funny. Looks like we all delay gratification if and only if it actually serves us, otherwise snatch greedily at whatever is in reach
sunjieming 2y ago
Virtually every study I read about in AP Psych in HS failed to replicate - including this one. That whole class in hindsight was at best a waste of time and at worst provided bad info to make life decisions on
- resource_waste 2y ago
  The reputations of these authors need to be dragged through the mud. Daniel Kahneman's Wiki page doesnt make him look out to be a fraudster, despite him confidently mentioning studies that never replicated, despite him signing off on fake data from other fraudsters.
  - sunjieming 2y ago
    Thinking Fast and Slow was blowing my mind until I started running into more and more studies that I knew didn't replicate. It took on a Freakonomics/Gladwell vibe after that
    - KerryJones 2y ago
      Apologies for ignorance, can you tell me more about Gladwell issues?
      - tucosan 2y ago
        Gladwell is known for citing junk science and twisting reality by adding his own unfounded interpretations to research he's basing his theories on. There's a host of criticisms of his work. [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell#Reception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell#Reception) is a good starting point.
        KerryJones 2y ago
        Great, thanks for this link, will dig in more.
      - 2y ago
poindontcare 2y ago
[flagged]
poindontcare 2y ago
hahahaha!
honkycat 2y ago
I've always thought this was stupid and obviously not real. What if the child was being playful by not following the obvious "correct" path? Wouldn't that point to someone who is social and humorous and happy? Isn't that an advantage?
spiderice 2y ago
When Dieter Uchtdorf was in the presidency of the LDS branch of Mormonism he gave a talk to the entire church about this study. It’s since basically become doctrine in the LDS church. Funny how far and widespread these inaccurate studies can become. And the large majority of the people who hear the original study will never hear that it wasn’t reliable.
tqi 2y ago
I've never understood the "so what" of this study. Did people not think self control was a virtuous characteristic before? Will they stop trying to teach their kids to exercise self control now that it's been debunked? Sometimes it feels like much of social psychology exists primarily to sell books and lecture series tickets.
- tqi 2y ago
  (that said, i'd love to see a study to see if there is a correlation between ability to resist wading into contentious comment threads on hackernews can "reliably predict adult functioning")
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Wut? I gave up all those marshmallows for nothing?
- dbcurtis 2y ago
  If you will allow me to riff off of your jest... I literally thought that to myself a little over 3 years ago. Yes, literally thought about the marshmallow experiment in the context of my life. You see, I came within a gnat's eyelash of having the classic widow-maker heart attack -- on the doctor's treadmill. (I didn't. I have no heart damage -- I'm fine, and lucky...) But I did spend a 3 day weekend in the cardiac unit getting a stent put in, and had the opportunity to think about 50 years of life choices. I spent half a century being a 3-sigma gratification delayer. Now, that has had a lot of positive impact on my life, but I also came to the conclusion that it was time that I started eating more marshmallows. (Metaphorically -- literally I eat fewer marshmallows because I am much more careful about my diet...) So I would not go so far as to say: "Life is short, eat desert first.", but... I will say: "Life is short, don't forget to eat desert in moderation as you go along."
jgalt212 2y ago
I think all of these studies fail to account for the credit component. i.e. I can see that this man I just met has one cookie, but now he's promising me another cookie (which I may or may not be able to see). And then if I do what he says, he'll give me two cookies. What probability do I assign to the chances he can deliver on his promises? Maybe he's a liar. Maybe before I completed the assigned task, he came across a better deal and allocated all his cookies.
- tsavo 2y ago
  To your point, there are multiple assessments being made, many of which not being accounted for in the original. Does the listener fully comprehend "the rules" as they're being laid out? The listener is evaluating the trusthworthiness of the speaker? The listener may evaluate their own skills in pulling off a deception by taking the marshmallow and lie about it. Due to "the rules" laid out by the speaker, does the listener consider they may change "the rules" (influenced by their historical experience with adults)? Does the listener place any value on a 'marshmallow' at all, maybe a toy, or a type of item previously identified as having high value would lead to different results? Adjusting for variables in the 'fuzzy' sciences can be difficult due to the innate subjectivity.
sandspar 2y ago
>dynamite psychology result with far reaching conclusions fails to replicate No way?
Mozai 2y ago
I remember growing up getting into scenarios like the Marshmellow Test, but I didn't learn to delay gratification; what I learned was I'm a sucker if I wait or make sacrifices. Often "you'll get two later if you surrender this one now" became "there is no second marshmellow and you're not getting the first one back." How many times do other kids have to experience this before they learn not to delay gratification? and thus get accused of "poor impulse control" when I'd call it "learning from experience" ?
- sirspacey 2y ago
  Food scarcity will teach you that quick. Almost the entirety of the lower bracket of employment works this way “Do customer service for this big tech company and you could get into a corporate role” Except that the number of people who have every successfully done that is close to 0% of hires One of the things I love about Reddit is the visibility it has given to the “promises that no one will ever keep” system that runs most retail/service jobs
niemandhier 2y ago
Children that trust the adult making the promise tend to be able to delay their own gratification: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26799458/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26799458/ From a game theoretic point of view it makes sense: If your internal model of adults suggests, that you should put a gausian prior on the waiting time until they keep their promise, i.e. most adults in you life tend to keep their word, waiting makes sense. If however your experience tells you to assume a power law as prior, cutting you losses after a time is perfectly rational. This has a certain beauty, since it would mean that success in life correlates with dependable parents and given the temporal component I actually would assume causality.
oglop 2y ago
Yeah, a fucking marshmallow won’t do much to predict you future. Family wealth does.
aristofun 2y ago
No wonder, generally speaking. Human nature is way deeper and more complex, more fluid than any artificial model/framework imposed on it. Psychology is not a reproducible science strictly speaking for that reason.
xbar 2y ago
Calling it a test is almost certainly an exaggeration at this point. Perhaps we could call it "The Marshmallow Trick" now?
marcell 2y ago
The study found associations at r=0.17 for both BMI and educational attainment. Not a lot but not zero. The marshmallow test deals with kids so it’s noisy by nature, that there are two mild associations is interesting. It has mild predictive value. I think there’s a strong desire to have this test shown to be faulty. Perhaps because the test is so easy to do, parents do it on their own kids and don’t like the outcome.
- erichocean 2y ago
  > I think there’s a strong desire to have this test shown to be faulty. Indeed, there's enough of a desire that you can P-hack into failing results.
jwie 2y ago
Marshmallow tests are more a test of the child’s priors about adult reliability. If the child has reliable parents they tend to pass the test. The children of reliable parents do better in life, which is obvious. The test also fails to account for a temperate child that doesn’t actually want more than one in the first place and isn’t playing the researchers game.
parkaboy 2y ago
I was hoping (based on my initial reading of the HN title) that they tried the Marshmallow test on adults.
PopePompus 2y ago
I think eventually the only famous Psych. experiment which will remain undebunked is the Milgram Experiment, not because it is better than the rest, but because nobody would be allowed to try to reproduce it today.
- cdot2 2y ago
  It's almost like Psych and other social 'sciences' as a whole are unscientific and should be considered liberal arts fields.
- erichocean 2y ago
  The Milgram Experiment is debunked simply by reading about what actually happened in the experiment vs. the narrative people are given after the fact.
idunnoman1222 2y ago
Once we control for X You can control away anything the whole idea of isolation is bunk
wanderingmind 2y ago
Hidden Brain had an episode on the recent studies challenging the Marshmallow test https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/when-to-eat-the-marshmallow/ https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/when-to-eat-the-marshmallow/
bradgessler 2y ago
The results of this study have always bothered me. I don’t like marshmallows. Never have. If I was run through the marshmallow test I would have done whatever it takes to get out of there quickly and not have to eat marshmallows.
rerdavies 2y ago
Value of one extra marshmallow: 4 cents. Time it takes to earn an extra marshmallow: 20 minutes. Hourly earned value (assuming you like marshmallows): 12 cents. Reasons not to like marshmallows: The principal ingredient is gelatin, a protein obtained by boiling skin, tendons, ligaments, and/or bones with water. And they don't really taste that great. It has always seemed to me that the best strategy in this situation is to eat the marshmallow right away in the hopes that the psychologists will let you out of the room early. A better strategy might be to refuse to stay in the room for 20 minutes.
tibbon 2y ago
It is interesting to read something like this and then go back to YouTube where there are 100s of videos pointing to this test as one of our most important ways to understand psychology and success. I suppose we all parrot things that have little basis in reality and we have not verified for ourselves
- layer8 2y ago
  YouTube videos are driven by how engaging they are, not by how truthful.
siilats 2y ago
So there are two options. You get a coefficient of 0.2 and a std error of 0.2 so you say it’s not significant but the reason is you don’t have enough data so st error is too large. Or you have a coefficient of 0.0001 and a st error of 0.01 so you are pretty sure there is no relationship.
brnaftr361 2y ago
I expect a contributing factor to this is natural inference. Delayed gratification is just fine for certain windows and in certain domains. But continuous delay (or non-gratifying outcomes) are surefire ends to update priors. Anecdotally, I'm very much in that position. I've delayed and subsequently mistimed my whole life and let's just say my expectations are totally unmet and I'm quickly unraveling into a hedonist plus flagellant. I'd expect a decay of delayed gratification in aggregate. And this will vary from individual to individual dependant on their expectations/(negative realizations - positive realizations) or similar, and negative realizations are supposedly weighted higher than positive by a factor of 3-5. This exacerbates the rapidity of decay. I'd posit, then, that delayed gratification can predict within a window; that window may be a "critical window" which leads to enhanced success. Failing to obtain that success then predicts regular decrements to delayed gratification metrics. And delayed gratification isn't beneficial in all scenarios anyways. Sometimes the payoff is in immediate and remorseless action.
andrewp123 2y ago
I don’t know how any experiment like this could be taken seriously. Your action could change 15 minutes apart if you feel like having sugar, if the guy felt intimidating or not, if the last thing he said seemed friendly or if his facial expression was off at the very end, etc. There must be a better way of judging the validity of a social experiment using first principles. There’s a huge psychological side that people completely ignore.
Slava_Propanei 2y ago
[dead]

519 points by superposeur 2y ago

superposeur 2y ago

Thank god, as I love marshmallows and instant gratification.

bigstrat2003 2y ago
I submit to you that marshmallows are incompatible with instant gratification, because they're only good when you slowly toast them over a fire until browned on all sides. Cold marshmallows (or marshmallows shoved in the fire and then blown out) are just sad and not worth the calories.
- atonse 2y ago
  If you added that (offer them marshmallows and a way to toast them), all you've done with that test is identify the foodies :-) (I 100% agree with you about them being toasted)
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  They are also good baked with cereal to produce a sweet bar.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Touche. That is a good use for them as well.

dudeinjapan 2y ago

They only measured the subjects' "adult" life outcomes at age 26. Perhaps the researchers were rushing to publish and unwilling to wait long enough for the effect to replicate.

Veen 2y ago
Or perhaps there is no effect.
- error_logic 2y ago
  Or perhaps economic mobility has stagnated and external factors dominate.
  - wonnage 2y ago
    fixing the structural problems in the economy is so boring, let's blame the marshmallows

m3kw9 2y ago

Maybe when they grow up some of them learned to steer away from instant gratification. Or maybe you need to account for how big luck is in the success in life

influx 2y ago

Have any famous psychological tests replicated?

dommer 2y ago
https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/ten-famous-psychology-findings-have-been-difficult-replicate https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/ten-famous-psychology... Tricky subject by all accounts
acover 2y ago
.
- Noumenon72 2y ago
  You can't answer "Have any famous tests replicated?" with "out of 100 studies from the year 2008, 36% replicated" unless one of those studies was actually famous.
  - exe34 2y ago
    > You can't answer Only if you're a frequentist. A Bayesian would see evidence that studies in general fail to replicate, and thus have a better prior for famous ones than 50:50.
    - layer8 2y ago
      As an aside, such lines of argument regarding credence are not in any way incompatible with frequentism. Few frequentists deny the correctness of Bayes’ theorem.
  - acover 2y ago
    True, I'm not going to read through the list and decide if any of them are famous for him.
    - fragmede 2y ago

vvpan 2y ago

Yet another study that "explains it" turns out to be false. Good.

error_logic 2y ago
Failure to replicate could happen for any number of reasons. The sample populations might not enjoy marshmallows the same way! But, yes, good to be aware of the possibility of both false positives and false negatives.
- vvpan 2y ago
  In general the original study felt like a more widely accepted Myers-Briggs of sorts. But as always happens with people and personality related theories the reality is either "more complicated" at best or the theory is outright false.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
I don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed promising turned out to be false. The goal is to have explanations of the world, after all. It's better to have learned that something is false than to go on believing the falsehood, but better still is to have something true which explains things.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  > don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed promising turned out to be false. It is definitely a good thing. It is good that the conclusions of a study that was demonstrated to be unsound have been replaced by those of a better study. If some even better study comes along later and replaces this one, that'll be good too. We now know more. It's not fun or convenient, but is generally aligned with the direction science should go. If people who've made decisions based on their understanding of the results of this study, it's good that they'll no longer labor under a delusion, and can potentially make better decisions. Good in the sense that hard things which make us incrementally better are good.

jti107 2y ago

anedotally this has held up in my social group. the people that i grew up with and went to school with...the ones that could delay instant gratification and had long term goals ended up doing pretty well in life. the ones that didnt have any plans and just went with the flow did poorly and just getting by. also in my life i notice a big difference in performance from when i had goals/vision for my life vs. going through the motions. IMO i think you need to have goals/vision/standards for all the important areas in your life (hobbies,partner,career,family,relationships)

wonnage 2y ago
the confirmation bias is biasing
haliskerbas 2y ago
Could go either way in my social group. Some folks hit ivy and then ended up at mediocre tech jobs anyway, others hit ivy and struggling to find work. Others went with the flow and still made it to the same mediocre tech jobs. And the ones who failed through school and barely made it through community college have successful small businesses because they were charting their own path the whole time.
- charlie0 2y ago
  > And the ones who failed through school and barely made it through community college have successful small businesses because they were charting their own path the whole time. By definition, it sounds like these folk were able to delay gratification quite well.
  - haliskerbas 2y ago
    Maybe it depends on how you look at it? If gratification is "working on my side project instead of finishing homework due tomorrow" then it wasn't delayed much, they were gratified the whole dang time!
- kenjackson 2y ago

jpwagner 2y ago

Think of the marshmallow test as a short story by a famous author. It rings with truth, but it's not "science".

jessekv 2y ago
"Ringing true" is in the telling. For example, you could imagine a long Paul Graham post framing the 1-'shmallow child as shrewd and decisive, grabbing a quick snack and keeping moving, whereas the 2-'shmallow child is passive and entitled.

nineplay 2y ago

I was talking about this a few weeks ago and realized I would eat the damn marshmallow. Researchers do not act in good faith. Maybe they're testing me for delayed gratification. Maybe they're measuring my anxiety levels as I wait for someone to come back with a promised reward. Maybe they want to know how angry I'd get if they come back and said they were out of marshmallows - or come back and flat out ate the marshmallow in front of me. A lot of researchers would happily trick me into thinking I was killing someone if they thought they could get away with it. Its the truth that demolishes all the hand-waving about the marshmallow test - it relies on the subject's trust of the person running the experiment. I wouldn't trust them, why should anyone else? When evaluated that way - particularly when testing on children - the outcome is painfully predictable. - Children who have adults in life that they trust have better outcomes. - Children who do not have adults in their lives who they trust have worse outcomes.

RRWagner 2y ago
I was a subject in a college psychology experiment when I was an undergrad. The researcher said I would get some amount of $ for each new word in a sequence that I could correctly remember and repeat without error. I mentally made up a story and added each new word to the story. At the end they said that I remembered too many words, more than they had ever anticipated, it was too much $ for them to pay and gave me $5. Later I wondered whether the real experiment was about reacting to being tricked.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Just remember that the reason why Ted Kazinsky said he bombed the federal government was because he was subjected to MK Ultra experiments in college. I'd say you got a good deal getting two dollars instead of life long trauma.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    This has been theorized by his brother and others, but I'm not sure he ever claimed that. He wrote a lot of words in a pretty famous document as to why he bombed his targets, none of which were federal government targets.

deleted 2y ago

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rolph 2y ago

when marshmallow tested, i spit on my marshmallow, when asked why i explained "now noone will want that one", "now i get two marshmallows because i waited" , "and also a third one cause only i will want it"

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

Found this article whilst looking for more details, the same results seem to have been reported for several years, including following the subjects into middle age: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmallow-tests-predictive-powers/ https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmal... > As the researchers predicted, the study finds only a tiny correlation between marshmallow test times and midlife capital formation. A graduate’s score on the self-regulation index was, however, modestly predictive of their middle-age capital formation, the study finds.

suzzer99 2y ago

I've always suspected the marshmallow test measures desire to please the researcher more than anything else. I'm supposed to sit here and stare at this marshmallow for some indeterminate amount of time, just to get one more marshmallow? Offer me a whole bag and we'll talk. Otherwise, you're wasting my time. My marshmallow would be gone before they could finish explaining the task.

llm_trw 2y ago
I've eaten a bag of marshmallows today while coding till 4am on a Friday night. Your proxy tests for self control have no power here.
fragmede 2y ago
My parents bringing me in, saying researcher is from a big name university and is very smart and do what he says, is going to have a much different effect on me than my step dad coming late to pick me up because my mom dumped me on his lap last minute because she has a new boyfriend and doesn't have time for me now and also my step dad says university is stupid and for geeks and don't believe a word the stupid college girl tells me to, is going to have a biasing effect on the kid!

charlie0 2y ago

Maybe tempting children with marshmallows is a bad proxy for testing delayed gratification, but the thesis about being able to delay gratification leading to success seems to be true as far as I can tell. Anecdotally, all the people I know who can't delay gratification are just scraping by (this includes another SWE who earns a decent amount but is rather impulsive). All those I know who can delay it are doing great.

veggieroll 2y ago

I don't like marshmellows.

rolph 2y ago
Zira : Because I loathe bananas! https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=G3Phb8AyrxE https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=G3Phb8AyrxE

jmugan 2y ago

It's funny. When you first do work, you want the experiment to satisfy your hypothesis. When you are building on work, you also want the replication to succeed. But when it is a famous result like this, you actually want it to fail so people talk about your result. There are uncountable ways that these experiments can be unconsciously and subtly affected by the desire of the experimenter. As an aside, I believe one interesting confounder in the marshmallow test is that it tests more (or at least as much) the subject's trust that the eventual reward will actually be given as it does the subject's ability to wait for the reward. So if you live in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just eat it.

readthenotes1 2y ago
I recall that your confounder was used as an explanation to wave away the air reproducibility of the marshmallow test, but I do not recall anyone actually ever testing that. This recent article seems to indicate that it's all just horse feathers and so you can make up any confounder you want to explain it away...
cryptoegorophy 2y ago
As someone who lived in “unpredictable environment “ in the 90s in Russia the correct statement would be: So if you live in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just move to a predictable environment. I saw a lot more people saving for the future rather than spending it all, which I surprisingly found the other way around in Canada, which is a predictable environment.
- zanellato19 2y ago
  > As someone who lived in “unpredictable environment “ in the 90s in Russia the correct statement would be: So if you live in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just move to a predictable environment. I think _everyone_ would take that opportunity if it was presented. Or at least most people.
- jkolio 2y ago
  Your environment was predictable, in that savings up enough would likely give you the option to move out. There are places where saving up enough money to leave your unpredictable environment unpredictably ends with you drowned in the Mediterranean, or in limbo short of your intended destination, or shipped back to where you spent so long trying to leave, in addition to the "success" case.

deleted 2y ago

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luketheobscure 2y ago

An alternative interpretation of the Marshmallow Test is that it is a measurement of trust as much as it is of self control. If you don't believe that the researchers are going to give you the two marshmallows, then you're not going to wait.

readthenotes1 2y ago
Or, that it's complete nonsense with no predictability whatsoever so you can make of it what you want
- chairhairair 2y ago
  I suspect (or hope) that many professional psychologists are beginning to doubt that data acquired in these contrived laboratory settings can provide a window into actual human behavior at all.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Could be completely random how the kid feels that day and how much they like marshmallows in the first place.
layer8 2y ago
And low trust in researchers would explain low incentive for academic achievements. ;)
Ekaros 2y ago
Seems like this needs repeated test. Where for a few first rounds there is no reward for later...
smegger001 2y ago
or a second marshmallow isn't all that appealing. if offer one now or two later i might pick one now because i don't want two.

deleted 2y ago

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rahimnathwani 2y ago

The findings of the original study were called into question by a larger 2018 study[0]. The original study had 90 students. Some folks did a study with 900 people. They found the same correlation that the original study did. But when they controlled for household income, they found most of the correlation disappeared. The obvious conclusion is that household income is a predictor of both: - inability to delay gratification, and - higher academic achievement This makes sense when you consider that someone growing up in a poor household may have both: - less reliable/continuous/predictable access to material things, meaning they would rationally seize immediate opportunities rather than taking the risk of a larger future opportunity, and - less academic support Now, this new study (OP) goes even further, finding that the correlation itself is weak. [0] Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159-1177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661 https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661

Squeeeez 2y ago
The obvious conclusion is not that obvious. You can have genetic traits which affect self-control, for example.
- planb 2y ago
  It doesn’t even have to be genetic. Parents which are able to raise their children to be functioning adults probably were raised by functioning adults and were able to find a job that leads to higher household income. We‘re talking about statistics here, so outliers are not relevant. Unfortunately this often prevents lots of meaningful discussions, because that would imply that a) it’s not just „you need to work hard to be successful“ (which one side of the political spectrum does not like to hear) and b) where and how you grew up is very predictive of how capable you are (which the other side does not like to hear).
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    In regards to a and b, wouldn't someone who thinks the former likely be someone who also thinks the latter? Those don't seem contradictory and, indeed, one is a possible explanation of the other.

yodon 2y ago

I can speak to this test a bit from experience: as a very young child, I was in a pilot study used to design a large longitudinal study, and my younger sibling was in that large longitudinal study. At about age 4, I ended up literally maxing out the delayed gratification test and being sent home with a ridiculously large bag of M&M's, much to this dismay of my mom. With that as context, I wonder whether some of the changes/lack of reproducibility are actually measures of decreasing economic mobility and economic agency within the US. Early studies on ability to delay gratification were done during the favorable economic conditions baby boomers grew up in. More recent studies were done in eras with far less economic mobility. It's quite likely you'd see a smaller effect today, not because the impact isn't there, but because it's so much harder today to make a significant upward change in your economic status.

erichocean 2y ago
Good points.

dekhn 2y ago

Many details of this particular experiment made me greatly reduce my confidence and interest in social science. I was trained up in quantitative biology- and when I look at studies like this, I see a long list of "things that could go wrong, leading the investigator to falsely conclude their hypothesis is true". But in this case, I think the investigator actually didn't care enough about doing high quality research- they simply started with a moral belief/value judgement and ran an experiment and chose to interpret the results to support their "hypothesis". And the nature of social science is such that it's really hard to truly run an "honest experiment".

swatcoder 2y ago
You can read over a hundred years of extensive, exhaustive criticism of most social "sciences" for exactly that reason, and many of us grew up with a categorical understanding of a difference between "hard" material sciences like physics and chemistry and "soft" sciences like social sciences and many subdomains of biology and medicine. But that distinction has largely fallen out of the zeitgeist and many people now just take anything ever published in a "scientific journal" as sound. It represents a huge regression in scientific literacy among the public and sets us up for people becoming increasingly skeptical of "hard science" conclusions because so much of what they've incorrectly come to accept as science never really was.
- tash9 2y ago
  True but there has been a movement towards replicating these high profile findings in the soft sciences. Hopefully that will gain more traction as a lot of the "newsworthy" studies are forced to get retracted after failing to replicate.
- newaccount74 2y ago
  > people becoming increasingly skeptical of "hard science" conclusions A big problem is that "hard science" conclusions often only apply to very specific circumstances, but scientists and the general public then extrapolate to more generic situations. The consequence is that a lot of things that are supposedly based on "hard science" aren't really proven at all, it's just someone making educated guesses.

WhitneyLand 2y ago

So in a nutshell, one of the greatest failings of science in history comes down to, researchers were under pressure so they caved and compromise their ethics and morals. Even worse, the replication crisis is only one reason that the public has continued to lose faith in science in the post truth era. It’s also the disinformation campaigns that set out to attack whatever’s in a groups interest whether it be politics or the environment. Maybe the coup de grâce will be social media which encapsulates people into bubbles seemingly impenetrable to the truth.

nyrikki 2y ago
This result could happen without any intentional conduct, so ironically you may have made a similar error as the original researchers. While there are very real issues about reproducibility and motivation, rarely do studies actually claim what pop science puts in the headlines. Popper has a better approach with the idea that evidence cannot establish a scientific hypothesis, it can only “falsify” it. It is actually how we write computer programs in the modern era too. The Scientific realism camp is committed to a literal interpretation of scientific claims about the world, but others like myself consider it confusing the map for the territory. But that is the realm of philosophy and not science. While the time scale and wasted effort from the flawed original paper is regrettable, this is the process working in the long run. This paper's falsification is the process working, irrespective of some claims of 'ethics and morals' Studies about humans will always be subject to problems, exactly because of ethics and morals, e.g the tuskegee experiments.
- WhitneyLand 2y ago
  Of course it’s not all intentional. And it may not even be unethical by their standards as far as certain kinds of p-value hacking are allowed and journals are sometimes are hesitant to call out problems. But there’s been a huge amount of questionable behavior and there has to be personal responsibility with that. It’s not an overstatement to call this part of one of the biggest failures of science in history, and you can’t just sweep that under the rug as unintentional. As far as pop science I’m not addressing that but those sins don’t exonerate everything else. I don’t get what you mean about Popper either, he likely would’ve been all over the reproduceability crisis and calling out integrity as a key issue. Yes, science is self-correcting and things have definitely started to improve after learning from all of this. But the damage has been done. at the time when we need science, the most it’s been discarded by a significant part of the population.

PaulHoule 2y ago

I'd like to see the 2024 version where the kid who got two marshmallows is fat and the one who didn't want any marshmallows at all is skinny.

reginald78 2y ago
Funny interpretation. The single marshmallow kid derided for having no self control or ability to delay gratification was actually harnessing the offered deal as a form portion control to maintain a healthy weight.

paganel 2y ago

By this point all the normal people have started ignoring this type of “science”, many of us were ignoring it from the very beginning. Too bad that this quackery has already made its way into many States’ apparatuses, see the obsession about the nudge thing, for example.

bell-cot 2y ago

Imagined childish reasoning: I could eat one marshmallow now, and hopefully finish this stupidboringweird test sooner and go home. Or I could be stuck here longer, for one crappy little marshmallow, showing that I know how to play a stupid suck-up little teacher's pet.

trallnag 2y ago
How is this childish reasoning?
- bell-cot 2y ago
  No interest in gaming the test, to make himself look better to grown-ups. Obviously short attention span. And no filter on his emotions. (Which is not to say that it's wrong. Unless you're at serious risk of starvation, a marshmallow is only a feeble token reward.)

aqsalose 2y ago

From abstract (article is paywalled) >Although modest bivariate associations were detected with educational attainment (r = .17) and body mass index (r = −.17), almost all regression-adjusted coefficients were nonsignificant. No clear pattern of moderation was detected between delay of gratification and either socioeconomic status or sex. Results indicate that Marshmallow Test performance does not reliably predict adult outcomes. I guess the question is whether the covariates that were adjusted for in the regression are true confounders and not, say, something caused by ability to delay gratification.

aantthony 2y ago
That’s what I thought too. For example if they “control” for factors like IQ or social economic status, then the correlations will be reduced. This isn’t a surprise unless you think the delay of gratification is itself the cause of success (seems like a straw man so they can claim to “challenge” the original study) There is more info from one of the authors here which includes the preregistration document: https://x.com/jess_sperber/status/1818100487964496119 https://x.com/jess_sperber/status/1818100487964496119 Edit: Also, I think the associations of 0.17 prove the title is false

FredPret 2y ago

Some fields of study will always be art, not science. Literature, art, human psychology. A good writer, artist, or therapist can make a truly great contribution. But they cannot conduct disciplined experiments and establish truth numerically. And that is OK. What is not OK is the cabal of academic psychologists who don’t even know that they’re full of shit because they aren’t trained in any of the numerical / “hard” disciplines. (Hard as in well-defined, not difficult).

Banditoz 2y ago

I'm confused. How do you access the full text of the article? Why is it behind a $15 charge?

fragmede 2y ago
why do you expect it for free? what is a reasonable charge, in your eyes?why is that charge reasonable and $15 isn't?
- Banditoz 2y ago
  I don't know. Usually I see arxiv posted a lot here, and I can access those without issue. If I do pay, do the authors of the paper get my money?
  - ska 2y ago
    > If I do pay, do the authors of the paper get my money? In general, no.
- KerryJones 2y ago
  Because there is usually an effort in HN to post non-paywalled links.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rustcleaner 2y ago
Sadly Shy-Blub is cucked too, doesn't have it...

dfedbeef 2y ago

That test was already broken a decade ago by Kidd. The socioeconomic part of it is BS and has been known to be for a while.

lawlessone 2y ago

Try it on shareholders.

photonthug 2y ago
This is actually a really great point. If successful people can delay gratification, how do we explain enshittification generally? Running a good company into the ground while enjoying temporary gains is not delayed gratification, and yet the people that are in charge of such things are successful by other metrics (Ivy League, ceo, etc). It’s the marshmallow writ large which is pretty funny. Looks like we all delay gratification if and only if it actually serves us, otherwise snatch greedily at whatever is in reach

sunjieming 2y ago

Virtually every study I read about in AP Psych in HS failed to replicate - including this one. That whole class in hindsight was at best a waste of time and at worst provided bad info to make life decisions on

resource_waste 2y ago
The reputations of these authors need to be dragged through the mud. Daniel Kahneman's Wiki page doesnt make him look out to be a fraudster, despite him confidently mentioning studies that never replicated, despite him signing off on fake data from other fraudsters.
- sunjieming 2y ago
  Thinking Fast and Slow was blowing my mind until I started running into more and more studies that I knew didn't replicate. It took on a Freakonomics/Gladwell vibe after that
  - KerryJones 2y ago
    Apologies for ignorance, can you tell me more about Gladwell issues?
    - tucosan 2y ago
      Gladwell is known for citing junk science and twisting reality by adding his own unfounded interpretations to research he's basing his theories on. There's a host of criticisms of his work. [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell#Reception https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell#Reception) is a good starting point.
      - KerryJones 2y ago
        Great, thanks for this link, will dig in more.
    - 2y ago

poindontcare 2y ago

[flagged]

poindontcare 2y ago

hahahaha!

honkycat 2y ago

I've always thought this was stupid and obviously not real. What if the child was being playful by not following the obvious "correct" path? Wouldn't that point to someone who is social and humorous and happy? Isn't that an advantage?

spiderice 2y ago

When Dieter Uchtdorf was in the presidency of the LDS branch of Mormonism he gave a talk to the entire church about this study. It’s since basically become doctrine in the LDS church. Funny how far and widespread these inaccurate studies can become. And the large majority of the people who hear the original study will never hear that it wasn’t reliable.

tqi 2y ago

I've never understood the "so what" of this study. Did people not think self control was a virtuous characteristic before? Will they stop trying to teach their kids to exercise self control now that it's been debunked? Sometimes it feels like much of social psychology exists primarily to sell books and lecture series tickets.

tqi 2y ago
(that said, i'd love to see a study to see if there is a correlation between ability to resist wading into contentious comment threads on hackernews can "reliably predict adult functioning")

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Wut? I gave up all those marshmallows for nothing?

dbcurtis 2y ago
If you will allow me to riff off of your jest... I literally thought that to myself a little over 3 years ago. Yes, literally thought about the marshmallow experiment in the context of my life. You see, I came within a gnat's eyelash of having the classic widow-maker heart attack -- on the doctor's treadmill. (I didn't. I have no heart damage -- I'm fine, and lucky...) But I did spend a 3 day weekend in the cardiac unit getting a stent put in, and had the opportunity to think about 50 years of life choices. I spent half a century being a 3-sigma gratification delayer. Now, that has had a lot of positive impact on my life, but I also came to the conclusion that it was time that I started eating more marshmallows. (Metaphorically -- literally I eat fewer marshmallows because I am much more careful about my diet...) So I would not go so far as to say: "Life is short, eat desert first.", but... I will say: "Life is short, don't forget to eat desert in moderation as you go along."

jgalt212 2y ago

I think all of these studies fail to account for the credit component. i.e. I can see that this man I just met has one cookie, but now he's promising me another cookie (which I may or may not be able to see). And then if I do what he says, he'll give me two cookies. What probability do I assign to the chances he can deliver on his promises? Maybe he's a liar. Maybe before I completed the assigned task, he came across a better deal and allocated all his cookies.

tsavo 2y ago
To your point, there are multiple assessments being made, many of which not being accounted for in the original. Does the listener fully comprehend "the rules" as they're being laid out? The listener is evaluating the trusthworthiness of the speaker? The listener may evaluate their own skills in pulling off a deception by taking the marshmallow and lie about it. Due to "the rules" laid out by the speaker, does the listener consider they may change "the rules" (influenced by their historical experience with adults)? Does the listener place any value on a 'marshmallow' at all, maybe a toy, or a type of item previously identified as having high value would lead to different results? Adjusting for variables in the 'fuzzy' sciences can be difficult due to the innate subjectivity.

sandspar 2y ago

>dynamite psychology result with far reaching conclusions fails to replicate No way?

Mozai 2y ago

I remember growing up getting into scenarios like the Marshmellow Test, but I didn't learn to delay gratification; what I learned was I'm a sucker if I wait or make sacrifices. Often "you'll get two later if you surrender this one now" became "there is no second marshmellow and you're not getting the first one back." How many times do other kids have to experience this before they learn not to delay gratification? and thus get accused of "poor impulse control" when I'd call it "learning from experience" ?

sirspacey 2y ago
Food scarcity will teach you that quick. Almost the entirety of the lower bracket of employment works this way “Do customer service for this big tech company and you could get into a corporate role” Except that the number of people who have every successfully done that is close to 0% of hires One of the things I love about Reddit is the visibility it has given to the “promises that no one will ever keep” system that runs most retail/service jobs

niemandhier 2y ago

Children that trust the adult making the promise tend to be able to delay their own gratification: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26799458/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26799458/ From a game theoretic point of view it makes sense: If your internal model of adults suggests, that you should put a gausian prior on the waiting time until they keep their promise, i.e. most adults in you life tend to keep their word, waiting makes sense. If however your experience tells you to assume a power law as prior, cutting you losses after a time is perfectly rational. This has a certain beauty, since it would mean that success in life correlates with dependable parents and given the temporal component I actually would assume causality.

oglop 2y ago

Yeah, a fucking marshmallow won’t do much to predict you future. Family wealth does.

aristofun 2y ago

No wonder, generally speaking. Human nature is way deeper and more complex, more fluid than any artificial model/framework imposed on it. Psychology is not a reproducible science strictly speaking for that reason.

xbar 2y ago

Calling it a test is almost certainly an exaggeration at this point. Perhaps we could call it "The Marshmallow Trick" now?

marcell 2y ago

The study found associations at r=0.17 for both BMI and educational attainment. Not a lot but not zero. The marshmallow test deals with kids so it’s noisy by nature, that there are two mild associations is interesting. It has mild predictive value. I think there’s a strong desire to have this test shown to be faulty. Perhaps because the test is so easy to do, parents do it on their own kids and don’t like the outcome.

erichocean 2y ago
> I think there’s a strong desire to have this test shown to be faulty. Indeed, there's enough of a desire that you can P-hack into failing results.

jwie 2y ago

Marshmallow tests are more a test of the child’s priors about adult reliability. If the child has reliable parents they tend to pass the test. The children of reliable parents do better in life, which is obvious. The test also fails to account for a temperate child that doesn’t actually want more than one in the first place and isn’t playing the researchers game.

parkaboy 2y ago

I was hoping (based on my initial reading of the HN title) that they tried the Marshmallow test on adults.

PopePompus 2y ago

I think eventually the only famous Psych. experiment which will remain undebunked is the Milgram Experiment, not because it is better than the rest, but because nobody would be allowed to try to reproduce it today.

cdot2 2y ago
It's almost like Psych and other social 'sciences' as a whole are unscientific and should be considered liberal arts fields.
erichocean 2y ago
The Milgram Experiment is debunked simply by reading about what actually happened in the experiment vs. the narrative people are given after the fact.

idunnoman1222 2y ago

Once we control for X You can control away anything the whole idea of isolation is bunk

wanderingmind 2y ago

Hidden Brain had an episode on the recent studies challenging the Marshmallow test https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/when-to-eat-the-marshmallow/ https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/when-to-eat-the-marshmallow/

bradgessler 2y ago

The results of this study have always bothered me. I don’t like marshmallows. Never have. If I was run through the marshmallow test I would have done whatever it takes to get out of there quickly and not have to eat marshmallows.

rerdavies 2y ago

Value of one extra marshmallow: 4 cents. Time it takes to earn an extra marshmallow: 20 minutes. Hourly earned value (assuming you like marshmallows): 12 cents. Reasons not to like marshmallows: The principal ingredient is gelatin, a protein obtained by boiling skin, tendons, ligaments, and/or bones with water. And they don't really taste that great. It has always seemed to me that the best strategy in this situation is to eat the marshmallow right away in the hopes that the psychologists will let you out of the room early. A better strategy might be to refuse to stay in the room for 20 minutes.

tibbon 2y ago

It is interesting to read something like this and then go back to YouTube where there are 100s of videos pointing to this test as one of our most important ways to understand psychology and success. I suppose we all parrot things that have little basis in reality and we have not verified for ourselves

layer8 2y ago
YouTube videos are driven by how engaging they are, not by how truthful.

siilats 2y ago

So there are two options. You get a coefficient of 0.2 and a std error of 0.2 so you say it’s not significant but the reason is you don’t have enough data so st error is too large. Or you have a coefficient of 0.0001 and a st error of 0.01 so you are pretty sure there is no relationship.

brnaftr361 2y ago

I expect a contributing factor to this is natural inference. Delayed gratification is just fine for certain windows and in certain domains. But continuous delay (or non-gratifying outcomes) are surefire ends to update priors. Anecdotally, I'm very much in that position. I've delayed and subsequently mistimed my whole life and let's just say my expectations are totally unmet and I'm quickly unraveling into a hedonist plus flagellant. I'd expect a decay of delayed gratification in aggregate. And this will vary from individual to individual dependant on their expectations/(negative realizations - positive realizations) or similar, and negative realizations are supposedly weighted higher than positive by a factor of 3-5. This exacerbates the rapidity of decay. I'd posit, then, that delayed gratification can predict within a window; that window may be a "critical window" which leads to enhanced success. Failing to obtain that success then predicts regular decrements to delayed gratification metrics. And delayed gratification isn't beneficial in all scenarios anyways. Sometimes the payoff is in immediate and remorseless action.

andrewp123 2y ago

I don’t know how any experiment like this could be taken seriously. Your action could change 15 minutes apart if you feel like having sugar, if the guy felt intimidating or not, if the last thing he said seemed friendly or if his facial expression was off at the very end, etc. There must be a better way of judging the validity of a social experiment using first principles. There’s a huge psychological side that people completely ignore.

Slava_Propanei 2y ago

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