

The Marshmallow Test Revisited - shazad
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/13/the-marshmallow-test-revisited/

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ghshephard
Perhaps what the first study _actually_ discovered, unbeknownst to the
original researchers, is that children from homes in which the _guardians are
reliable_ turn out to be more prosperous in life. Therefore, what was actually
being measured, wasn't the self control of the children, but a proxy for the
reliability of the adults in their life.

~~~
jonnathanson
While that's a tempting conclusion, it's a tough to justify. The original
experiment didn't study or account for the parental variable, so it's
impossible to tell what effect it may, or may not, have had "behind the
scenes."

It's entirely possible that the reliability of adults is a _factor_ in
developing a child's impulse control. It's also possible that it's a
significant factor. But we'd have to design experiments to study its
significance. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the variable being studied
in the original experiment, impulse control, was actually just a red herring
disguising parental reliability as the true factor.

~~~
gizmo686
>Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the variable being studied in the
original experiment, impulse control, was actually just a red herring
disguising parental reliability as the true factor.

The variable being studied was weather or not the children would wait for the
second marshmallow, and that the children who did wait did better in life. I
suspect that everyone would agree that this is not an casual relationship,
which would imply that the children did better because they waited for the
marshmallow. Therefore, we know that we are looking for what factor(s) lead to
the correlation between waiting and success in life. In the original
experiment it was assumed, I believe without justification, that the common
cause was impulse control. This experiment shows that the trustworthiness of
the environment plays a significant role in determining how the children make
their decision. This result support the hypothesis that the original
marshmallow experiment was a proxy for the living environment of the children,
not their impulse control. I'll leave it up to researchers to determine how to
answer the question of what is going on behind the scenes, however I think the
take home message for the rest of us is that experiments and statistics only
prove exactly what was being looked at, and any conclusion we draw from that
is interperatation that is subject to human error.

~~~
timr
_"This experiment shows that the trustworthiness of the environment plays a
significant role in determining how the children make their decision."_

No, the experiment shows that the trustworthiness of the person establishing
the _immediate challenge_ plays a significant role in the outcome. It's a huge
leap to go from that relatively mundane finding, to the conclusion that the
randomly selected participants in the original study were biased in a
systematic way toward mistrust of adults.

 _"This result support the hypothesis that the original marshmallow experiment
was a proxy for the living environment of the children, not their impulse
control."_

It provides only extremely weak support for that hypothesis. A reasonable
prior expectation is that it is unlikely for a randomly selected group of
young children to share a mistrust of adults that would carry on throughout
their lives.

~~~
InclinedPlane
_"It provides only extremely weak support for that hypothesis. A reasonable
prior expectation is that it is unlikely for a randomly selected group of
young children to share a mistrust of adults that would carry on throughout
their lives."_

I think you misunderstand gizmo686's point. My reading (of gizmo686's post as
well as the study) is that this is not about a question of merely the
individual child's responses but also about their environment, which at the
age of 3 is going to be primarily controlled by their parents. It's not just a
matter of whether a child who grows up mistrusting the world is at a
disadvantage. It's more that a child who grows up in a world that is
untrustworthy is at a disadvantage.

Let me be blunt, we are talking about shitty parents. Or, to tone it down one
notch, less capable parents. On the one hand you have parents who can provide
for their children, who are attentive to their needs, etc. Those parents will
tend to raise children better, and will tend to raise children who grow up to
be more successful. On the other hand you have parents who let their children
down often, are unable to provide for them as well, make promises that go
unfulfilled, etc. Those parents will tend to raise children less well, and
will tend to raise children who grow up and have more problems in life,
problems finding jobs, problems with law enforcement, problems with
relationships, etc.

In broad strokes this is essentially what the second experiment is trying to
show that the first experiment is testing. By intentionally priming children
to either be trusting or untrusting of their immediate environment and of
adults they show that they can control the outcome of the marshmallow
experiment. And that in turn leads to the argument that perhaps it is a
similar degree of priming (through the ongoing experiences with their family)
and the underlying level of trust for adults that is being tested in the first
experiment.

It's not an ironclad experiment but it's an interesting hypothesis, certainly,
and at the very least it unravels some of the overly simplistic
interpretations of the first marshmallow experiment.

~~~
dhimes
I believe timr's point is that this is a hypothesis based on the outcome of
the study, but the study did not measure it. The study _measured_ the response
to the experimenter.

I would add that it's possible that the two marshmallow experiments have very
little to do with each other besides using children and marshmallows to
perform. Further study is needed to make further conclusions.

For example, we might be tempted to try to combine the results and say
something like "kids who trust and respect authority do better in life as
adults." But this is not what the study/studies measured, and while this study
may inspire interesting hypotheses for future work, that work needs to be
performed before we can make conclusions.

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MattGrommes
In watching my kids grow up I'm always struck by my inability to figure out
why they did certain things. They obviously had reasons but when questioned
those reasons were regularly things I would have never thought of. I always
felt it was a bit like anthropomorphizing animals to make deductions about
their behavior. You might think you have a good hypothesis but it's very
difficult to know that you're working with the same variables they are.

~~~
edanm
The more I read about psychology/rationality, the more I realize that what
you're saying is also true about _ourselves_. We regularly do things that
don't make sense, and have only vague, and often wrong, ideas about why we did
what we did. Except that our brain is amazingly good at self-delusion, making
us believe that there _were_ reasons behind it all.

~~~
Evbn
There are almost always reason, but not always conscious rationality. Emotions
in the limbic system are sort of like the analog machines of old, before
digital logic computers, as a weak analogy.

What is often ignored is that rational decision making depends on priorities
and estimations of prior probability, and these vary wildly based on
circumstance.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'd like to agree; but the conclusion "Irrationality is observed; sometimes I
find out its based on emotion: All irrationality is based on emotion" is not
warrented. Its possible people make bad decisions because they're bad-
decision-makers. Or maybe something else, I don't know.

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aufreak3
The interesting bit in the original experiment seemed to be the kids who'd
_say_ they'll wait for 15mins, but then succumb to the temptation of the
marshmallow in front of them and eat it while waiting. Any rational
(inductive) bit ought may be expected to be completed before the wait started.

PS: Will be good if such article writers link to the paper, or at least the
abstract.

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wallflower
When I saw the title, I originally thought of:

<http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Welcome.html>

I think the above is a more interesting challenge. Particularly because there
is a magical point where the kids or even adults realize that they just have
to start playing with the spaghetti - can't just stare at it.

~~~
gizmo686
The more interesting part of that is that, next to engineers, kindergardeners
are the best performing group at the marshmallow challenge. [1]

[1] <http://marshmallowchallenge.com/TED_Talk.html>

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tomasien
Did any of the kids eat one marshmallow and then trick the study
administrators into giving them the other two marshmallows? Those are the kids
that are going to be founders.

Maybe I'm reaching.

~~~
rcthompson
I think I remember reading about some of the kids (in the original study) who
hollowed out the marshmallow and ate the insides, then left the shell on the
plate to trick the adults.

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peng
What if the child didn't much care for marshmallows, and reasoned that
spending 15 minutes of their life waiting for an extra marshmallow was an
incredible waste of time?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Funny; but seriously the kids enter the room knowing "Im taking part in a
serious Adult study of my behavior." They likely try to behave as they're
expected to behave. The real test is, how soon does the feeling of obligation
decay to the point that the appeal of a marshmallow (admittedly insignificant)
outweights the desire to please.

My Sister took her youngest to an experiment where, in the waiting room they
put the kid in a room with toys on a table, and took her to 'do paperwork'.
The boy was told to leave the toys alone.

Really she went to the observation room. They simply timed how long it took
for the bored child to play with the toys.

See, by testing the child 'before the test started' they avoided pre-loading
the kid. They changed-up the test by having other kids and adults enter the
room and play with the toys, or repeat the admonition, or whatever.

The

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hwallace
My issue is this: I do not know at what age the ability to prioritize is
developed(this may be ignorant). I feel prioritizing and weighing pros vs cons
are both much more valuable than delaying gratification.

I am not a young child, anymore, but I could imagine a child (me) taking the
marshmallow that is sitting in front of me, because maybe I'd rather have a
marshmallow now, and waiting 15 minutes is just too long for a second
marshmallow. Maybe I'm wrong and I was just a kid who didn't think about candy
all the time.

My point is even when I was really young, I still may value my time (not
consciously), and would rather go play with legos and have a marshmallow, than
spend my time concentrating on getting a second.

~~~
lurker14
Good point. I'd hope the study would control for this by locking you in a room
for 15 minutes regardless of marshmallow logistics.

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thejteam
Whenever I meet a new kid, I mentally classify them as either a "one
marshmallow child" or a "two marshmallow child" based on what I think the
result woud be if they took the marshmallow test. One thing I have noticed is
that there is a strong correlation between one marshmallow kids and one
marshmallow parents.

~~~
goldenchrome
The question then is then: is it a genetic predisposition or is it more
behaviorally learnt?

~~~
philwelch
This calls for a twin study!

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kstenerud
Notice what they downplay in this article: That almost half of the kids who
had just been in contact with a reliable adult still ate the marshmallow.

Also, were the kids allowed to keep playing with the fun art supplies while
they waited?

A link to the actual study would help.

~~~
gizmo686
In the third paragraph, "revisited" is a hyperlink to the original paper. For
anyone interested, here is the URL:
[http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeri...](http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeriAslin2012_Cognition.pdf)

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gizmo686
For anyone interested, here is the original paper:
[http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeri...](http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/ckidd/papers/KiddPalmeriAslin2012_Cognition.pdf)

It was hyperlinked in the 3rd paragraph.

