3 ms·

For a scientific article two things were lacking: How do they define "successful"? How big is the variance/standard deviation?

• silentbicycle 17y ago
  It's a summary of academic research for the New Yorker. If you want statistics on the results, you'll probably need to consult the research itself, not a popular summary.
  • sketerpot 17y ago
    It would be nice if they gave a link to the research itself. This goes in general for all popular science news.
    • timr 17y ago
      The research spans multiple decades and research groups. It's not like the results are published neatly in a single article. If you really want to read the primary literature, you've got the name of the researcher and his university. PubMed is your friend.
• teej 17y ago
  I couldn't find Mischel's 1990 published findings anywhere online for free, but I did dig up this article which describes some of the data. http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:1ZRYswNI6dIJ:www.courseweb.uottawa.ca/epi6181/images/Delay_gratification.pdf+Predicting+adolescent+cognitive+and+self-regulatory+competencies+from+preschool+delay+of+gratification:+Identifying+diagnostic+conditions&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:1ZRYswNI6dIJ:www.coursew... In the follow up they looked at several factors: Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, sensitivity to rejection, overall functioning, educational attainment, drug use, ratings of self-esteem, and more. It looks like they checked the correlation of each factor separately. Besides experiment sample issues (which the linked document touches on) it looks the the experimenters were pretty rigorous in attaining valid results.