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.ncb

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.