Children who opt for a quick, small reward later appear to have more behavioral problems, are less able to concentrate on tasks, achieve lower grades, and have more difficulty maintaining relationships with others. This is compared to children who were able to stay away from tasty treats for longer. How important is self-control? You sit at a table in an otherwise empty room. A friendly woman in a long coat leans towards you and places a plate on the table. On the plate is one piece of bacon, a marshmallow. You’re hungry, not very hungry, but you would like that bacon.
,You can choose,, the woman speaks to you with a smile . ,You can eat this bacon as soon as I leave the room. But… you can also wait a while, then you will get another bacon when I come back. Then you will have two., She walks towards the door. ,The choice is yours.,
What would you do?
Eat or forget
For many, it will not be very difficult to wait a few minutes for the woman to return. Three minutes for extra bacon isn’t very long. Unless you don’t need a second piece of bacon, or unless you’re starving to death and this is your last resort, you’ll be able to hold yourself back for a second one for a few minutes.
This is of course a bit different for children of about four or five years old. They were given this task by psychologist Walter Mischel and were left alone in a room with the marshmallow. And a camera that recorded how they dealt with the situation, of course.
You then see different behaviors being reviewed. One child may sit quietly and appear unaffected. The other child immediately puts the treat in his/her mouth, as if the experimenter’s entire explanation had passed him or her by. Or with the thought: ,It’s okay, I feel like having THIS bacon., But the vast majority of children make every effort to avoid putting the candy in their mouth. They look away, they put their hands in front of their faces, sing a song to distract them, bite small pieces of the candy hoping it won’t be seen, or start kicking their feet impatiently. One perseveres, the other eventually succumbs.
Delay of reward
A study into delay of gratification . Mischel, curious about what enabled people to delay a reward, presented groups of children with the dilemma of waiting or giving in to a temptation. However, some time later, in a follow-up study, it turned out that there were differences between the children who immediately put the bacon in their mouths and those who had little difficulty delaying it.
In itself it doesn’t sound very remarkable . Those who can easily avoid something tasty at one time will also have less difficulty in other areas. The link with concentration and attention somewhere is also made fairly quickly. If you can leave that tasty chocolate behind, it might be easier for you to leave your computer game waiting to finish an essay. Yet there appeared to be more consequences to the ability to postpone.
A sweet future
Mischel’s follow-up study not only showed that adolescents who had little difficulty with procrastination as children had fewer problems with concentration and attention, but they also achieved higher scores on tests (they were probably better able to study for a long time and pass the long test). served), maintained their friendships better, handled problem situations better and appeared to be more competent.
So who knows, it might be better to wait before accepting that chocolate, it could just determine your future…
If you want to see the experiment in practice, click here.