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People always use the marshmallow test as a sign that the participant can’t delay gratification. But what if they just understand time-value-of-marshmallow. So
by gretch 2y ago
People always use the marshmallow test as a sign that the participant can’t delay gratification.
But what if they just understand time-value-of-marshmallow. Sometimes marshmallow now is better than marshmallow later.
- namdnay 2y agoA marshmallow in the hand is worth two in the bush
- swayvil 2y agoIf you abstain from marshmallows for 40 years, I'll give you 1000 marshmallows.
- rightbyte 2y agoHistoric returns is no promise of future returns. Terms and conditions apply. The marshmallow test is interesting. Rather than measuring mainly self control, it might be measure more or less only trust.
- swayvil 2y agoIt could be a test of which you prefer: an actual-marshmallow or a dream-marshmallow. It's only natural to prefer the first but I think we can be trained to prefer the second.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoMarshmallows in hand have diminishing returns as well. The difference between having 0 marshmallows and 1 marshmallow is much larger than the difference between having 1 and 2, or 2 and 3.
- malloci 2y agoThis is the way
- autoexec 2y agoThere's a lot of things the marshmallow test might signal, but most kids probably aren't spending a lot of time performing cost benefit analysis when faced with the problem. I wouldn't doubt that kids with trust issues would tend to do worse. Certainly the ones with behavioral/executive function/developmental issues do worse than others.
- saagarjha 2y agoSpeak for yourself. The kids I know are modeling the future interest rates on marshmallows.
- _kb 2y agoToddler scribbles are in fact marshmallow yield curves.
- zmgsabst 2y agoYou have a lot of people that take that last fact and then assume the converse. But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.
- autoexec 2y agoYou're right. Although it can hint at the possibility of those types of problems, the marshmallow test shouldn't be used to make those kinds of assumptions, especially in isolation. Like I said, it can signal a lot of very different things (even hunger).
- motorest 2y ago> But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped. You've repeated the whole thesis from the article: people are conditioned for delayed gratification if that is possible/predictable, and then asserts that parents have the influence to develop that trait in kids by fostering predictability.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y agoLike most everything else in social psychology, the Marshmallow Test is (largely) bullshit [0]. [0] "Delay of gratification and adult outcomes: The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning" https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.14129 https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.14...
- watwut 2y agoDon't fault social psychologists for what pop culture does with what they wrote. Even author of the marshmallow test experiment is arguing against this simplistic interpretation of it.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoOne of the criticisms of the test is that children who fail it are more likely to have parents who regularly fail to deliver on their promises. From that perspective it doesn’t make sense to wait.
- aqueueaqueue 2y ago> time-value-of-marshmallow Bravo! Love that phrase. Some freakonomics shit happening there...
- latexr 2y agoYes! I personally find marshmallows underwhelming. If you gave me one or two I might eat them. But if the choice is between “eat one now and you’re free to go do whatever you want” or “stay locked alone in this room for a quarter of an hour and you get two”, the latter is a worse proposition. I’m perfectly content with being with my own thoughts for hours, but being forced to do nothing for a crummy reward when a better alternative is right there is not compelling.
- a12k 2y agoAre you a child between the ages of 3 and 5? Because that's the typical age of a participant in the marshmallow test. This is like scoffing a kid not finding something on Dora the Explorer.
- latexr 2y agoI’m not criticising the kids, I’m criticising the conclusions of the experiment. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to explain my reasoning this clearly or perhaps even consciously understood why I had made that choice, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have been able to intuitively make that tradeoff. Which is precisely the point of the article: kids subconsciously performing an action based on psychological and environmental factors not fully within their grasp. Within the parameters of your analogy, my point is closer to scoffing at the experimenters for making sweeping conclusions based on kids being able to find a single item on Dora the Explorer. Sure, maybe the kids who failed to find it had a learning disability, or maybe they weren’t that stimulated by being forced to watch a show they disliked when they could just go play something else. Even with the conclusions having been drawn years later, where the finders performed better academically, that could still indicate the non-finders were simply uninterested in the way most schools work by forcing you to be there and listen to certain subjects at certain times. Perhaps they would’ve thrived in a freer environment where they had greater freedom to pick the subjects for each day.
- HDThoreaun 2y agoYoure locked in the room either way.
- simonebrunozzi 2y agoMarshmallow test has been debunked by a recent 2021 study [0]. [0]: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmallow-tests-predictive-powers/ https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmal...