{"id":282200,"date":"2018-10-03T01:50:13","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T01:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/03\/you-know-the-marshmallow-experiment\/"},"modified":"2018-10-03T01:50:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T01:50:13","slug":"you-know-the-marshmallow-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/03\/you-know-the-marshmallow-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

dollsahoy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

andersonsallpurpose<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

jitterati<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

flavoracle<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

tlbodine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

fizzgigfurball<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

tlbodine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

You know the marshmallow experiment? <\/h1>\n

So there\u2019s this experiment where researchers take a bunch of preschoolers and give them a marshmallow and they say, \u201cok, you can eat this now, or you can wait thirty minutes and then we\u2019ll give you two marshmallows.\u201d <\/p>\n

And they leave them alone with hidden cameras and watch the struggle of willpower and it\u2019s supposed to say something about delayed gratification. <\/p>\n

And this thing gets used to explain why some people are better with money than others, or make various other better life choices. The Aesop here is if you can delay your satisfaction, you\u2019ll get ahead. <\/p>\n

But here\u2019s a proposed version of that experiment that\u2019s more realistic. <\/p>\n

Give the kid the marshmallow and explain it all as above. Then come back 30 minutes later and say, \u201cSorry, actually we ran out of marshmallows, so even though you didn\u2019t eat yours, you\u2019re not getting a second one. Other kids got two, but you don\u2019t. Also, every kid with fewer than two marshmallows has to give back their original marshmallow. Sorry we didn\u2019t tell you that earlier now hand it over.\u201d <\/p>\n

Then call them back for a repeat experiment where you give them the same offer. See how many kids scarf that marshmallow down in two seconds flat because like hell they\u2019ll trust you again. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If it\u2019s the experiment I\u2019m thinking of they did run the experiment again, and this time did take into account something they didn\u2019t before: the socio-economic level of the children involved and if there had been broken promises made before to them. Children from lower socio-economic circumstances who had been let down in the past were far more likely to eat the marshmallow the first time around. The experimenters then showed the kids they had the two marshmallows to give them and let them out.<\/p>\n

Then comes the fun part: they ran the experiment again.<\/p>\n

This time, those kids who ate the marshmallow before waited. Without any further prompting than keeping their word, the scientists destroyed the notion that children in poverty are more prone to poor impulse control or are more likely to scarf down sugar than rich kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh now that is interesting! I\u2019d never heard that follow-up before. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I first learned about this case study in college, something about it felt incomplete, but I could never really put my finger on it. It seemed overly simplistic, but I couldn\u2019t see the missing piece because in was in one of my cognitive blind spots. <\/p>\n

Knowing about this follow up is incredibly valuable and insightful! <\/b><\/p>\n

And this is why it\u2019s vital for human beings to check our assumptions and always be on the lookout for cognitive blind spots. Because even one missing variable can mean the difference between transformative insight and generations of deeply embedded misconceptions. <\/p>\n

This is also why it\u2019s important for the scientific community to actively seek out scientists with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. It\u2019s not about arbitrary \u201cdiversity quotas,\u201d it\u2019s about pursuing a diversity of insight. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

:^)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have a source, and not only does it key on the idea of the kids being more able to wait if they know the adults will be likely to keep their promises, but it also compares the waiting times of kids from Germany to kids from Cameroon, and found that the Cameroonian kids (unlike the German kids) almost all had absolutely no problems with the test, because they were raised in a completely differently way\u2013a way that was based on their parents anticipating the children\u2019s needs, so the kids already knew they adults would keep their promises and so the kids had no need to be upset (the report states that \u201cbeing upset\u201d is strongly discouraged in their culture)\u00a0 https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2017\/07\/03\/534743719\/want-to-teach-your-kids-self-control-ask-a-cameroonian-farmer\u00a0 <\/a>SO YES no matter how you look at it, it\u2019s really a test of the children\u2019s parents, not the children.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

dollsahoy: andersonsallpurpose: jitterati: flavoracle: tlbodine: fizzgigfurball: tlbodine: You know the marshmallow experiment? So there\u2019s this experiment where researchers take a bunch of preschoolers and give them a marshmallow and they say, \u201cok, you can eat this now, or you can wait thirty minutes and then we\u2019ll give you two marshmallows.\u201d And they leave them alone … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[2595,24573,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}