
The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure? - katiey
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/?single_page=true
======
abainbridge
> The researchers also, when analyzing their test’s results, controlled for
> certain factors—such as the income of a child’s household

Is that a valid thing to do? If "will power" was a strongly inherited trait,
and the theory is that will power leads to increase household income in adult
life, then this controlling would remove most of the signal.

The original paper relied partly on a questionnaire that asked the parents how
good their kids were at self-control. That seems unlikely to be reliable. They
also used SAT scores, which seems like a better measure. The abstract for the
new paper doesn't mention what they measured.

In conclusion, I'm not sure I learned anything here.

~~~
comboy
Marshmallows represent different value for kids with different background.
Some can have them every day, for some it's something they only saw other kids
eating.

It's similar to how it would be easy to risk $50K for somebody with $100M net
worth compared to somebody whose net worth is $100K.

~~~
stochastic_monk
I grew up in a household without sugary cereals. My siblings and I would sing
songs and dance with excitement when we had them. Socioeconomic status
certainly explains the difference between cohorts, but perhaps it’s the easier
signal to catch while the core mechanism is a matter of what is available in
one’s household.

~~~
_red
Why did your parents seek to create a household which avoided sugary snacks?
The fact is, that itself could be representative of the genetic predisposition
towards self-control.

~~~
stochastic_monk
It was a health decision. For good or bad? It could be parents who don’t trust
their self-control or who have a surplus of it and expect the same from their
children.

------
4bpp
So this is suggesting that childhood poverty may be a strong correlate of
whatever the marshmallow test tests (and childhood poverty is plausibly a
strong correlate of life outcomes, so the effect might be completely mediated
via childhood poverty rather than any notion of "affinity towards delayed
gratification"), but I'm not sure I understand how/whether it rules out the
following two.

(1) whatever quality X the marshmallow test tests is so strongly heritable
that the parents of X children already are X and therefore tend to be more
poor

(2) poverty is causative of X (maybe even by the mechanism the article
suggests, i.e. less stability -> higher uncertainty -> higher discounting of
expected future outcomes), but it's still accurate to label X "delaying of
gratification", and it is in fact causative to success; therefore, this is a
mechanism by which poverty perpetuates itself

~~~
yk
The study is suggesting that the marshmallow test is a test of mother without
college degree, and not testing something about the children beyond that. [0]

And in general, my suspicion about psychology is, that since you can always
invent an objection in the form of your (1) and (2), I doubt that statistic is
an actually good tool to look at these tests. If we assume for a moment that
we somehow get a ground truth of the experiment, by divine revelation or
however, then I suspect that we would see that we need as many categories as
there are children to get anything predictive.

[0]
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618761661](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618761661)

~~~
jabgrabdthrow
> I suspect that we would see that we need as many categories as there are
> children to get anything predictive.

Making a category to predict human behavior generally hurts those who are
“miscategorized” much more than it helps those who are accurately categorized
(there aren’t really “positive stereotypes” that jump into active-decision
processes like with negative stereotypes).

Therefore, we should not try to predict behavior by making even fuzzy-
categories other than one-child-per-category, since this may literally hurt
children, especially systemically underprivileged and underrepresented
children.

It’s important to control your own decision factors against your local
collection of “known non-causations”!

------
joosteto
Response by one of the original authors:
[https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/05/31/the-marshmallow-test-
he...](https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/05/31/the-marshmallow-test-held-up-ok/)

~~~
neonate
Good link, but that's not one of the original authors, assuming you meant of
the Marshmallow study.

Edit: I enjoyed the post, but his point turns out to be a relatively narrow
one:

 _The other headline from the replication is that the predictive ability of
the marshmallow test disappears with controls. That is, if you account for the
children’s socioeconomic status [etc...], the marshmallow test does not
provide any further information about that future achievement. It’s no
surprise that controls of this nature do this. It simply suggests that the
controls are better predictors. The original claim was not that the
marshmallow test was the best or only predictor._

Such a defense of the original claim makes sense in an academic context but
doesn't touch on why the marshmallow study made it into pop culture in the
first place. That was because of what it seemed to suggest about character and
self-control. The new study puts quite a different spin on that, as Collins
agrees:

 _What is called into question are the implications that have been drawn from
the marshmallow test studies._

The fact that those implications weren't part of Shoda, Mischel, and Peake's
original study is good to know, but not the most important thing for non-
specialists.

~~~
letsgetphysITal
> Such a defense of the original claim makes sense in an academic context but
> doesn't touch on why the marshmallow study made it into pop culture in the
> first place.

The Marshmallow Test is something the lay person can understand, and comes
with a great real-world demonstration, accurate or not. Other measures require
more field-specific knowledge or statistics education to understand.

------
MarkMc
A witty comment on Twitter: The real marshmallow test was to see who could
resist pontificating on meaning of the original marshmallow test until a
generation passed for it to be properly replicated. And you failed, all of
you.

[https://t.co/ayQshjt7BA](https://t.co/ayQshjt7BA)

~~~
vanderZwan
FYI, it looks like you linked to a different comment, and I can't find the one
you quoted

~~~
tqi
I think it was this one:
[https://twitter.com/hamandcheese/status/1001166897113595906](https://twitter.com/hamandcheese/status/1001166897113595906)

~~~
vanderZwan
Thanks! It did not show up for me in the replies when scrolling down

------
niklasd
Another example of studies that seem to be hard to dublicate is about the
concept of priming [0]. I think sometimes the non-scientific community picks
up an idea which just seems so good and starts to apply it to an array of life
sitations, while the idea itself might be limited to a small amount of
sitations/conclusions. Especially with priming, I read some hair-raising
statemens from laymen, about how priming seems to explain virtually
everything.

It also happens to scientists, of course, but they tend to be a bit more
careful and stick a little closer to the original experiment (which itself
might not be evidence enough for the conclusion).

[0]
[https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...](https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-
of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-
page-1/#comment-1454)

------
gcthomas
I see so many forum discussions where posters criticise the poor for their
'weak' decisions and effectively blame the poor for their own plight. Why
don't they just work harder and earn the money to pay for their healthcare and
education? they say. It is easy to withhold funding from deprived areas if you
convince yourself that it is their own fault.

These results should be on the front pages of newspapers and on TV (and
Twitter: @POTUS I'm thinking of you!). The idea that children raised with few
resources need help to plan for the long term seems to be rather lost on many
politicians these days.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Scarcity is an outstanding book about this, and makes the point that severe
constraints on _anything_ \- money, food, free time - can have psychologically
damaging effects.

In fact it’s extremely toxic - far more damaging than manynthings that have
been banned now.

~~~
fvdessen
Is poverty really linked to food scarcity in western countries anymore ? The
statistics show that overall, the poor are fatter than the rich.

~~~
cimmanom
Because they have access to only poor quality foods. There may not be calorie
scarcity but there is nutrition scarcity.

And yes, for some there's also "food insecurity" which is not knowing where
your next meal is coming from or having to choose between food and other
necessities (shelter, warm winter clothing, medical care, transportation,
etc.)

~~~
mynameishere
This just isn't true. It's so obviously not true it's really very amazing that
people repeat it. Go to a Dollar General in a poor area sometime. They have
lots of potato chips and assorted crap. Yep. They also have canned beans,
fruit, refrigerated sausage, cheese, chicken, etc. None of this is
unaffordable.

That's Dollar General. _Most_ places have access to a Walmart which is as good
nutritionally as any grocery store that ever existed.

If people buy junk food it's because they enjoy it. Christ, even your typical
gas station sells salad these days.

~~~
learc83
Cheap junk food is much more palatable than cheap healthy food.

> Most places have access to a Walmart which is as good nutritionally as any
> grocery store that ever existed.

Walmart tends to avoid the inner city. If you don't have a car there generally
isn't one close enough to shop at more than once a week or so. Bringing home a
week of groceries for a family on bus isn't a trivial task.

It's much easier to pick up some cheap food from a convenience store.

> Christ, even your typical gas station sells salad these days.

If you compare the per calorie price of that salad to junk food, it's much
more expensive.

------
yasp
Has anyone studied whether time preference might be genetically heritable?

Edit: why am I being downvoted for this?

~~~
finolex1
Because it's closely related to research on the genetic basis of intelligence.
Poor research on these topics in the past have been used to justify rather
egregious social policies (eugenics, birth control, racial discrimination,
etc). Even if it is heritable, making the knowledge public can only lead to a
sense of fatalism.

~~~
RyanZAG
> Even if it is heritable, making the knowledge public can only lead to a
> sense of fatalism.

That's a really terrible way to look at the world, and has caused a lot of
suffering. It's the very basis of the term 'heretic' that has caused so much
loss throughout human history.

No human ever has the right to deny knowledge to another for their own
benefit, because humans are not able to accurately determine what knowledge is
or is not harmful for others to hold. Often their choice to withhold knowledge
causes the most harm of all.

EDIT: Thinking about it more, 'the right' is not correct. Withholding
knowledge can be a malicious or competitive activity, but can never be a
beneficial one. Ie, you have the right to withhold knowledge from your enemies
to harm them, or withhold knowledge from competitors to increase your chances
of winning. But you need to be clear on this with yourself: you're not
withholding knowledge for anyone's benefit but your own.

~~~
aidenn0
If I withhold knowledge of where my gun is from my angry friend who wants to
kill someone, that benefits two people that are not myself (my friend who
would likely go to jail, and the person he is planning to kill).

------
chiefalchemist
In "The Influential Mind" she actual proposes another theory. Ultimately, it's
about trust. That is, if you've been betrayed in the past and you don't
believe the promise of waiting means a reward, you'll not wait.

It makes sense. Trust and risk are also useful tools over the long run.

------
afpx
Not surprising. One thing that I’ve learned about the rich is that they make
their children comply and be conscientious. Also, they seem to be really good
at creating tests that show that that they are naturally superior⸮

As a side-note (maybe someone can correct me), I thought that GWAS could so
far only find two personality traits that were heritable: extroversion and
neuroticism. If so, is there much point in these types of experiments except
to sell pop-science books and magazines?

------
wombat92
I was always skeptical of the marshmallow test. It let too many questions open
on why children eat the marshmallows. Was it because they hadn't eaten before
and came to school with low blood sugar, knew that waiting fifteen minutes for
two sweets the price of a penny is idiotic or that they felt uncomfortable in
the room and wanted to leave as early as possible?

~~~
MikkoFinell
So you were able to think of a couple confounding factors off the top of your
head, but you dismiss the idea that the researchers had considered those
factors and controlled for it? Despite the fact that their full time job it is
to think about things like that, and their careers are on the line if they
embarrass themselves by disregarding something as obvious and trivial like
that? Did you even read the original paper?

~~~
vanderZwan
This very article is about how the original paper did not control enough for
confounding factors:

> _Watts and his colleagues were skeptical of that finding. The original
> results were based on studies that included fewer than 90 children—all
> enrolled in a preschool on Stanford’s campus. In restaging the experiment,
> Watts and his colleagues thus adjusted the experimental design in important
> ways: The researchers used a sample that was much larger—more than 900
> children—and also more representative of the general population in terms of
> race, ethnicity, and parents’ education. The researchers also, when
> analyzing their test’s results, controlled for certain factors—such as the
> income of a child’s household—that might explain children’s ability to delay
> gratification and their long-term success._

~~~
MikkoFinell
The quote you copy-pasted from the article has nothing to do with my comment.

~~~
vanderZwan
You complain to GP for not considering that the people who published the
original Marshmallow test paper had controlled for confounding factors. In the
opening paragraph, other researchers complain about just that.

In other words: a more sensible reading of GP's comment would be as a reaction
to said paragraph.

~~~
MikkoFinell
I asked why OP is dismissing the possibility that the authors considered the
specific factors OP mentioned.

The quote you posted did not address that question. That is why it is not
related to my comment, like I already said.

------
vezycash
The article misses a keyword - RISK or risk tolerance.

Rich kids are able to take MORE risks than poor kids. We know that risk taking
is positively correlated with wealth.

Both rich kids and poor kids take risks (financial and otherwise) get
different results when they fail and when they succeed.

Simply, the rich kids suffer less from financial failures and make more money
from their financial successes.

FAILURE

The poor become fearful after a few failures. Then over-compensate (by being
wasteful spenders as mentioned in the article) or under-compensate (stick only
to absolutely safe paths - bad in the long term)

A loss of $10,000 might get only a shrug from the rich kid but the poor kid
might go mad with depression and suicidal thoughts.

SUCCESS

Finally, let's look at what success means to both classes. If we look at money
as leverage, then even financial success between the rich and the poor is
completely different.

Let's look at what a $0.1 increase in a stock price means to the two classes.

Person A has 100 stocks - $10 profit. Person B has 100,000 - $10k profit. Same
investment. Both succeed in the same stock but result is completely different.

Writing this has clarified one point for me. The poor need to risk a larger
percentage of their networth to see sizeable returns on their success.

When wins don't feel like wins and losses are devastating, it creates apathy
towards trying.

------
taneq
I wonder how you'd control for the fact that the Marshmallow Test is widely
known and that parents may have explicitly trained their children on similar
problems in the hope that they'll benefit later from the ability to delay
gratification?

~~~
zeth___
If you think poor people have time for doing that you haven't been poor.

~~~
taneq
So maybe well-off people score better on the test because they have time to
teach their kids some self-restraint, not because they're genetically better
able to resist marshmallows?

~~~
watwut
The question was not whether delayed gratification is genetic or not. The
question was whether not eating candy when stranger promiss you more candy for
not eating it makes you more successful later in life.

The correlation was found weak.

------
rahimnathwani
The paper may be good, but the article is poorly written:

\- it suggests that it is only after the publication of this paper that people
have questioned the causality relationship in the results of the original
study

\- it talks about reinterpretation of the original study's outputs as
'replication', whereas nowhere in the article does it suggest that anyone
attempted to replicate the experiment

------
gnicholas
Did the new researchers check to see if the parents were aware of the
marshmallow test or had ever tried it with their kids?

My guess is that at least some of the parents would have heard of it since it
is very well-known. These days, it's even in kid-focused apps [1] that are
designed to help with emotional development. I know many parents who have
tried it with their kids to see how they'd do.

It's likely that knowledge of the marshmallow test correlates with education
and income, so this could be part of the reason for the effects the
researchers saw.

1: [https://eqtainment.com/](https://eqtainment.com/)

------
amiune
How do they control how hungry kids are? This kind of experiments always
remember me about this Feynman statement about Young's rat experiment:
[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

------
heavenlyblue
Thinking that the only reason poor kids would prefer to eat the first
marshmallow due to having a low willpower is incredibly shallow: what if the
kid had an experience in life that tells him that no matter how credible the
source is, the second marshmallow has a huge probability of never coming; or
for what's it worth - they'll take away both of them since the child tried to
be "smart”?

Edit: came here to attack the article, but turns out my opinion is actially
the opinion of the article in the first place. They actually do say that this
test is not actually a test of willpower.

~~~
ivanhoe
You have an over-simplistic view of the original research. It wasn't only
about the "willpower", but also coping mechanisms than we employ to control
our urges. And it proven that some children are way better in this than
others. For instance some kids would turn their back to the cookie, or would
come up with some other distraction, so that they don't think about eating it.
Having this type of resourcefulness to quickly adopt to the situation is
probably a personal trait that comes very handy in one's life.

~~~
heavenlyblue
You’re arguing definitions. Resourcefullness is encompassed by willpower in
the context of this article.

Yet the point I am trying to make is that poor kids would have a tendency to
make their decisions based on their context which isn’t, sadly - optimal in
most cases.

The connection between “this kid doesn’t have to think about rudimentary
issues because he’s better off” becomes closer to “rich people can risk more
because their risk is hedged by their well-being”.

------
newman8r
Who cares about an extra marshmallow? They should do the experiment with
slices of pizza.

~~~
p1mrx
I'd imagine it hard to conduct a controlled experiment when step 1 is "bake a
pizza".

~~~
thaumasiotes
Presumably, you'd get the pizza from a pizza place. If you go for a national
chain, you wouldn't even be restricted to testing kids all in the same
location.

~~~
fma
I would imagine a kid would think they would be full after the first slice and
not care about the second.

It would be better for the test to have the child rank edible items they like.
Then a few weeks later run the test.

But as a new father, I've learned that eating training will vary widely
between families. Some families do not provide sweets as treats at all. Some
will always provide it after every meal so the kids do not feel it is a reward
or scarce resource. You can read up on the Satter method for details.

------
thedevil
> The failed replication of the marshmallow test

Actually, the result DID replicate here even though the experiment was
slightly different. Other variables were introduced that might suggest
additional explanations of the replicated result.

~~~
ouid
Marshmallow willpower is still correlated with future success, but _only_
because it is correlated with wealth. This means that there's isn't a causal
link between eating marshmallow willpower and success. which is a _different_
result, as the previous result included that as a possibility.

~~~
gnicholas
If success is correlated with wealth, then wouldn't the original study (done
with kids at a Stanford preschool) have shown a small/null result? That is,
most of the kids have wealthy and well-educated parents.

------
nemonemo
Many comments seem to cast doubt on the marshmellow test based on the article.
I honestly don’t understand how the contents of the article could lead to such
conclusion. Aren’t the economic status of the family and the result of the
test both correlated with the future economic status, and no causal
relationship is suggested?

------
tomtimtall
Poor kids grow up with patents who can’t often fulfil their promises, rich kid
man grow up with parents who can. The test is less about some inherent quality
a person that can effect their future performance and more about their
expectations given their expererience.

The fatal flaw in the original experiment is that they assume that the child
is give with 100% certainty a choice between instant and delayer
gratifications, when is fact the delayed gratification is contingent in their
trust in the experimenter. I’d wager if you did the experiment with one test
being a fully trusted adult and the other being a fully distrusted adult but
the same kid in both cases you would get both outcomes.

------
MichaelMoser123
Ok, they threw in lots of other parameters: so maybe the correct question
should be - what does this test predict for children of the same social
background? If this is a question that may not be asked then you may
reconsider your basic assumptions.

------
twhb
The paper's abstract [1] doesn't conclude that affluence is the source of
delay gratification.

Nor could it, using only this experiment. Even if a correlation is found,
correlation does not imply causation. One could equally suspect that delay
gratification leads to affluence (assuming parent-child similarity, whether by
nature or nurture), or a third factor affecting both, etc.

[1]:
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618761661](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618761661)

------
orbifold
I've come across variations of this conclusion many times now: That it is
really your parents affluence and educational background that predicts your
success in school and how much you will earn in the future. This is often
portrayed as being unjust. To me it always seemed obvious that children with
affluent and well educated parents are more likely to be intelligent, have
good self-control and other traits that are useful for being successful,
simply because those traits are hereditary.

~~~
TomMckenny
The study and article literally say that kids in a given socio-economic group
have the same life outcomes whether the grab the marshmallow or not.

And not just here but the notion that hereditary wealth correlates to
intelligence has been endlessly refuted.

But if it were true, wouldn't it mean that blue counties, being richer than
red counties, have a much higher average IQ?

~~~
haihaibye
> hereditary wealth correlates to intelligence has been endlessly refuted.

Source?

There's noise and luck (and IQ wasn't so much a factor for income
historically) but given the following, how could it not be true?

Intelligence leads to higher income (med school etc)

Income leads to higher wealth

Wealth is partly inherited.

Intelligence is partly inherited.

~~~
TomMckenny
This very article shows that rich tend to succeed and poor tend to fail
regardless of whether the grab the marshmallow or not.

But a summary of other issues include:

If intelligence corresponds to wealth, we would expect Nobel prize winners and
widely cited scientist to be the richest people.

Royal families and their descendants, having concentrated their genes, should
also be the most inventive, artistic or scientifically productive people.

It is possible to improve earnings skills, the degree to which it can be
improved is the degree to which it is behavioral rather than genetic.

Rich people are scattered through the world and through history and thus have
maximum genetic difference. They can not reasonably share a common gene that
skips over millions of people between them, let alone crossing the Atlantic to
end up in Montezuma's line. And if there were such genes, they would be
extremely conspicuous.

Yet in spite of great interest and success in sequencing, no gene correlating
to wealth has been found.

If some genes corresponded to earnings, it would have a geographic origin and
concentration as do eye color, lactose tolerance, epicanthic folds, malaria-
resistance/cycle-cell etc. Yet every region has a few rich people and many
poor.

In fact, regions change in wealth over time: nations like Egypt were rich for
millennia while Scandinavia and Japan were poor. This does not happen with
genes eg blue eyes don't emerge and disappear over millennia at random around
the world.

All of the above points to wealth acquisition as a essentially a purely
behavioral activity. Even if there were any genetic components, they would be
negligible to the point of being undetectable.

Pardon me for summaries rather than finding dozens of links but here is one
readable citation:

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-
people-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-people-are-
no-better-off/)

~~~
haihaibye
>> rich tend to succeed and poor tend to fail regardless of whether the grab
the marshmallow or not.

We were talking about intelligence. The marshmallow test measures delayed
gratification.

>> If intelligence corresponds to wealth, we would expect Nobel prize winners
and widely cited scientist to be the richest people.

It's a correlation - so we'd expect them to be richer than average, and richer
on average than dumber scientists. They are - you can sell a Nobel prize for
$5M.

>> Rich people .. scattered through the world .. history and thus have maximum
genetic difference. They can not reasonably share a common gene that skips
over millions of people between them. ... no gene correlating to wealth has
been found. ...

I am not proposing "wealth" genes - how ridiculous. It would be trivial
though, just find a richer ethnic group and use their novel variants. That
doesn't prove causality, though.

Intelligence is a highly polygenic trait, there are probably thousands of
variants involved. But here's a simpler model - inheriting a high IQ is partly
due to a lack of damaging variants. There are plenty of variants associated
with intellectual disability, go search OMIM. Inheriting one of them leads to
not being able to hold down a job, and thus lower income.

There you go - inherited intellectual disability - an exact genetic link to
wealth acquisition (or lack thereof).

>> [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-
people-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-people-are-
no-better-off/) >> controlled for other factors – such as divorce, years spent
in school, type of work and inheritance

I wish I had a dollar for every social science paper confounded by genetics!

Imagine wealth and IQ are perfectly linked and 100% heritable. Wouldn't
controlling for inherited wealth completely wipe away the signal?

For divorce - delayed gratification seems to be inherited - the original
marshmallow experiment showed this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment#Origins)

"Absence of the father was prevalent in the African-descent group but occurred
only once in the East Indian group, and this variable showed the strongest
link to delay of gratification, with children from intact families showing
superior ability to delay."

~~~
TomMckenny
>and richer on average than dumber scientists

...but not the richest of all people. Nor do the richest people in the world
tend to be great scientist, mathematicians, chess players, writers etc.

Because intelligence can only shuffle you around in the class you inherit but
only luck will get you out of it.

Children born to carpenters will tend to become good carpenters because they
get connections, learn skill and are given tools by their parents not because
they are inheriting more intelligence than someone just breaking in to
carpentry.

Children born to massive landlords will be landlords because they inherit the
estate not because they are smarter than people wanting to become landlords
with no cash.

>Wouldn't controlling for inherited wealth completely wipe away the signal?

You need to measure delta in wealth so in fact you _must_ control for wealth.
Otherwise a rich kid who looses half his inheritance will be counted more
successful than a poor kid who doubles his.

>just find a richer ethnic group

I point out above why this is impossible. If, for some reason, you decide this
moment in history was the one to make the judgment on, you would find that the
richest countries are also the most progressive and have the largest social
safety nets. Are we going to claim the intelligence correlates to progressive
politics and the wisdom of social safety nets as much as wealth?

>The marshmallow test measures delayed gratification.

And yet when it was believed to predict future wealth, it was said delayed
gratification _was_ intelligence.

>the original marshmallow experiment showed...

The article explains why the original test was fundamentally flawed. For one
reason, because it only had 90 subject rather than 900

~~~
haihaibye
> ..but not the richest of all people.

I said a correlation, not a correlation of 1.0

Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg etc are all very smart.
Top 1% smart or better. I don't think that's a coincidence.

>> Nor do the richest people in the world tend to be great scientist,
mathematicians, chess players, writers etc.

They dedicated their time and efforts to moneymaking rather than these
pursuits.

Same as chess skills may correlate with mathematical ability but to be word
class in either you have to dedicate your time to only one.

>> Because intelligence can only shuffle you around in the class you inherit
but only luck will get you out of it.

What about scholarships? My Granfather repaired fences and shot kangaroos, my
mum got top marks in school and won a scholarship, now I'm a scientist.

> point out above why this is impossible. If, for some reason, you decide this
> moment in history was the one to make the judgment on

Not what the data shows:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903117/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903117/)

In the 60s China and Korea were African level poor, but they had high IQs. Is
it a coincidence where smart phones are being built now?

> because it only had 90 subject rather than 900

A replication with much larger numbers found the effect, but with smaller
magnitude. That's not bad.

~~~
TomMckenny
>What about scholarships?

I believe scholarships are a nearly perfect indicator of intelligence. Self
motivation toward education is certainly another. These things allow people to
move from one part of their class to another. And by class I don't mean the
ever shifting terms politicians use, I mean the very specific meaning when the
term was coined: those who must work to survive vs those born never needing
to.

>Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg

1% of the population is in the top 1% of intelligence. 0.02% of the population
are billionaires. Clearly intelligence is a trivial factor for immense wealth.

For that list, some of the people you cite as smart were born to wealthy
parents, others not. If we assume[1] they are intellectually in the top 1%,
then this very list shows no correlation between inherited wealth and
inherited brains.

Since the claim is that the rich pass down smart genes, we should look look at
the top hereditary billionaires in the world and see if there is any evidence
that they are all in the top 1% intellectually.

Is Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia super smart? How about Liliane Bettencourt,
who does not even have hand in the business which makes her a billionaire. Or
Georg Schaeffler who drove the company he inherited deeply in to debt. How
about the wife of Steve Jobs.

Most relevant would be those who have been ultra rich for generations and only
married other rich people: is Prince Charles among the smartest people in the
world?

And the fact that rich Japanese adopt unrelated adults into the family who
then run the business for the heirs. Obviously genes are irrelevant to wealth
maintenance here.

>In the 60s China and Korea were African level poor, but they had high IQs

For that last several centuries, China's GDP was so low famines were a regular
occurrence. Only in the last silver of history have they become rich. So
obviously this has nothing to do with genetics but with changes to society
both inside and outside China.

------
5DFractalTetris
The lesson that one should never take candy from strangers does not seem like
an acceptable place to practice human experimentation, especially on children.

------
CM30
Makes me wonder what happens if the kid simply doesn't like eating
marshmallows. Would that also be counted as them putting it off, or is the
test set up in such a way that said people are counted out beforehand?

Hell, it seems someone's taste in general may affect the results for any of
these tests. Much easier to put off something you only sort of like rather
than something you're obssessed with...

~~~
washadjeffmad
Since there's nothing inherently appealing about marshmallows to children, an
assortment of interesting looking treats could have been presented, and the
children should have ranked them in terms of how much they wanted to try each.
Then they could perform the test with each and the outcomes could be compared
by the weighted values.

They did the marshmallow test with me as a child, and I thought it was dumb
because I didn't like marshmallows; of course I wasn't eager to eat one. When
we got the reward, I gave mine away to a kid who ate theirs initially. Had it
been a puzzle they asked us not to touch, it might have gone differently.

It's a very subjective test and can easily underestimate the children's
preferences.

------
wst_
If I am not mistaken article didn't mention kids age? Anyone knows? I assume
above 3 (judging by paragraph about home environment.) The thing is, above
certain age it would be very easy to get kids into a challenge and make them
to wait. Not to mention that marshmallow may not be a treat for anyone.

------
sanj
To make this relevant to the entrepreneurs: [https://medium.com/@micah/it-all-
changes-when-the-founder-dr...](https://medium.com/@micah/it-all-changes-when-
the-founder-drives-a-porsche-32ac25c713ad)

------
tankerslay
How is the marshmallow test (or "The Boy Who Ate the Marshmallow") different
from "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? Both teach a lesson with a nugget of wisdom,
the former about the perils of self-indulgence, the latter about the
foolishness of sounding a false alarm. Both lessons are supported by numerous
examples--far more than 90--that each of us has observed in our own lives. But
one is presented as a self-contained fictional story, while the other is told
as the result of an experiment that revealed some kind of natural law.

Why is our culture so drawn to presentations of basic life lessons as if they
were the results of scientific experimentation? It's as if we have some sort
of self-consciousness about "believing in" fables that drives us towards the
telling of "fables-as-science".

------
macromaniac
>For them, daily life holds fewer guarantees: There might be food in the
pantry today, but there might not be tomorrow, so there is a risk that comes
with waiting.

If food is scarce, wouldn't food hoarding be the rational action?

~~~
Applejinx
That happens too, but sitting in a room looking at a marshmallow that's not
yours as part of some weird test by adults that aren't trustworthy is NOT the
same as having the marshmallow.

You might reimagine the test as the 'adults lie and don't keep their promises'
test. There's been times I'd absolutely snatch the marshmallow. Then it's
_munch_ mine, good luck taking THAT away, adult ;)

------
gymshoes
This is the first time I've read about this test and the correlation of
willpower to being good at managing money looks like those theories that
people share on social media but are just fake news.

------
tomohawk
Interesting discussion related to developing self control in children:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBBPyCSJDEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBBPyCSJDEo)

------
Izkata
> evaluated according to a standard research measure that notes, for instance,
> the number of books that researchers observed in the home and how responsive
> mothers were to their children in the researchers’ presence

Number of books? Seriously? This is the stupidest...

Almost all the books in my childhood home belonged to me. My parents and one
of my brothers never read for fun, and and my other brother only rarely. One
of my friends was similar, his siblings didn't read almost at all (though I
think he got most of his books from the library, so there were few in the
house).

Counting just the _number_ of books tells you almost nothing about any given
individual family member.

Someone, please, tell me this journalist is incorrectly simplifying the actual
standard practice...

~~~
lisper
> Counting just the number of books tells you almost nothing about any given
> individual family member.

It does if the number is zero (which is actually the case in one branch of my
family).

~~~
nostrademons
Not if there's a decent public library nearby...

~~~
lisper
Fair enough. But in my family's case, there wasn't. They lived in the 'burbs.

------
tomglynch
I wonder what other well known studies have incorrect conclusions

~~~
vixen99
Somewhat premature to conclude that this 900-person study is definitive.

~~~
nighthawk1
Agreed. I wish study replication was more gloried in science. I think there
are many questionable studies out there that we take as fact.

~~~
tankerslay
Is this field even about "science" per se? It seems more oriented towards
fashioning just-so-stories that lend a scientific veneer to some piece of folk
wisdom in order to generate a buzz.

My own "experimentation" suggests that the character trait that predisposes
one to bandy about pop allegories such as "marshmallow test" is a portentous
sign in potential managers.

------
lkrubner
About this:

" _This new paper found that among kids whose mothers had a college degree,
those who waited for a second marshmallow did no better in the long run—in
terms of standardized test scores and mothers’ reports of their children’s
behavior—than those who dug right in._ "

Since "standardized test scores" tends to measure IQ, it seems this can be re-
phrased as "those who did well on the will-power test did not necessarily do
well on the IQ test, and vice versa."

In other words, raw will-power is not correlated with raw IQ. Which I think I
already knew? I've certainly known some athletes who were probably not as
smart as me, but who definitely had more will-power than me.

~~~
thegabez
Now that I think about it how is athleticism not considered a parameter of IQ?
If you can learn to shoot a basketball 10x faster and with more accuracy than
me, isn't your brain learning faster than mine?

~~~
reitanqild
Because IQ is a very specific thing.

It doesn't mean you know a lot or are good at high school maths.

IIRC an _ideal_ IQ test would be something you could take even if you can't
read and haven't learned maths and it will tell you something about your
general problem solving skills.

And as we all know, people can be excellent problem solvers without being very
athletic at all, so mixing that into the score would actually make it less
useful.

~~~
thegabez
You don't need to know how to read or know math to shoot a basketball and the
problem is well defined. Put ball through hoop.

~~~
yitosda
Someone who in principle has a very high "Athletic Quotient" may be relatively
bad at this depending on how many times they've attempted it before the test.

A good AQ test would hopefully control for this? Though my understanding is
that IQ doesn't control very well for practice either. It's a hard problem.

------
neves
I've read so much articles about the Mashmallow test that to make this the
front news in every paper would be a service for society.

------
sonnyblarney
With these kinds of things, I wonder how well we can extrapolate marshmallows
to anything else in life.

------
Smaug123
I found the following post [1] to make a very compelling argument that the
Marshmallow test isn't really testing for the ability to defer gratification,
but for a "generalised ability/desire to take and pass tests" (manifesting
itself here as the desire to pass the Marshmallow test). The post argues that
this is an underrecognised character trait which can predict success in
today's Western test-oriented world. Certainly I personally possess this trait
in spades, and my personal history is full of instances where this trait was
extremely useful to me.

Assuming the trait is either heritable or culturally imbued (and intuitively
it seems very likely that at least one of those is true), it makes sense that
rich parents are more likely to have children who are either natively or
culturally high in The Desire To Pass Tests: indeed, our society heavily
rewards people who have TDTPT, so rich parents are more likely to be high in
TDTPT and therefore are more likely to have genetically or culturally passed
it to their children.

[1]: [https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/113360634364/the-
stan...](https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/113360634364/the-stanford-
marshmallow-prison-experiment)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Certainly I personally possess this trait in spades, and my personal history
> is full of instances where this trait was extremely useful to me.

I love taking tests. Sadly, this has essentially never been any use.

~~~
Smaug123
Two immediate ways spring to mind, but it's a fundamental feature of my nature
and I feel its influence in many of the things I do.

* Liking (and therefore being good at) taking tests was useful in getting me into Cambridge, for example, and then in doing well at Cambridge.

* I can feel The Desire To Pass Tests unfolding within me during interviews, like Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres's dark side, and it definitely helps: my Test-Taker enjoys interviews, however scared I might be of them, so I just let the Test-Taker take the interview instead of me.

~~~
jakobegger
I absolutely hated taking tests (despite being good at it), and it's the
reason why I dropped out of grad school and started a business. Everything in
academia seemed to be a never ending series of tests: first literal tests and
exams, later talk proposals and article submissions and applications for
scholarships or grants... Academia seemed like one test after another, with no
end in sight.

At some point I just couldn't stand the feeling of other people judging me any
more. I really liked university, I liked all those smart people, the work
seemed interesting, but I just didn't want to be tested any more.

Being self-employed means I no longer need to take tests. (I probably couldn't
start a "startup" either, since applying for investments would be like taking
a test as well)

------
overcast
I'd wait the 15 minutes, get two, and trade them for something better than a
crummy marshmallow.

------
jstewartmobile
Oh psychology! What would coastal mags for pseudointellectuals do without you?

    
    
        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

~~~
jstewartmobile
So expressing that psychology is more of a controversy mill than a science is
unsubstantive? Got it!

I will keep that unorthodox opinion to myself until even more of their papers
don't replicate.

~~~
dang
It's simple: we're looking for thoughtful conversation. We don't much care
about your opinions, but if you express them in flamebaity or shallow ways,
we'll ask you to do better. Please do better.

------
Grue3
You'd expect poor kids to be good at self control (they're used to not be fed
every 15 minutes) while rich kids being spoiled and not caring for an extra
marshmallow.

~~~
billner
Someone who's hungry has less will power than someone who's well fed.

~~~
Grue3
Consider the following experiments:

\- a poor man and a rich man are going to work when they each see a dollar
coin on a sidewalk. Which of them would bother to pick it up?

\- a poor man and a rich man are both drunk after spending a night at the bar.
Which one would take a $50 taxi home, and which one will take a bus for $5
(you have to wait 15 minutes for a bus).

\- a poor man and a rich man are both hungry and walk by a restaurant for rich
people. It would take an extra 15 minutes to walk to a crappy diner for poor
people, but a lunch costs 5x cheaper there. Where would each man dine?

~~~
imjustsaying
>sidewalk coin

Rich man would pick it up, that's $720/hour if it takes 5 seconds. It's things
like that that make you rich. Poor guy would probably pick it up too unless
he's paranoid people will think he's poor.

>bus

Again looks like huge earnings per hour. He'll take the bus in this example
unless he has something very lucrative that he's missing out on, but he's
drunk so that's very unlikely.

>restaurant

Depends on the cost of the different places. It might not be worth the time to
walk to the other place if the difference isn't great. If he's on a weekday
lunchbreak, his time might be better spent elsewhere. Same thing for the poor
guy.

~~~
Grue3
You're assuming all rich people are pennypinchers like Warren Buffet. In
reality most rich people are rich because they were born into a rich family
and had the ideal opportunities to win at life from the start. The fact that
in reality you won't see rich people riding buses or picking up coins on the
street just shows that it's not about making most money per hour.

And in marshmallow test specifically you don't have kids who are good at
business and kids who are bad at business. You have kids of rich parents and
kids of poor parents. The fact that the former are supposed to act like
pennypinchers, despite not ever having to worry about money or being fed seems
counterintuitive to me.

~~~
billner
If you define rich as the top 1% than yes it might be from inheritance but
studies I've seen say over 80% of millionaires are self-made and didn't grow
up wealthy.

Your whole premise is contradicted by the study.

------
gaius
Our cats have never in their lives had to worry about food, yet they still
become anxious around mealtimes. That suggests that it is trait common to all
mammals regardless of their "wealth".

~~~
popnroll
You think the behavior of your cats represent the mammal population?

~~~
gaius
Yes, it’s called sampling

~~~
popnroll
Your cats are an unrepresentative sample of the mammal population, your
conclusion is biased.

~~~
gaius
That’s harsh, dude

------
amelius
Developers also routinely fail the Marshmallow test:

Should I develop for iOS, make a quick buck but give Apple more control over
my work, and contribute to the growth of the platform, leading to a vicious
cycle of control of Apple over developers?

... OR ...

Should I develop applications in a platform-independent way, but perhaps with
slower returns?

~~~
geofft
But they're not "failing" the test. If you take so long to develop the
software that you run out of funding, you're worse off than having written the
iOS-only code.

You're only guaranteed to have time to develop things right if you have more
than enough personal funds and no investors breathing down your throat, i.e.,
if you're rich. The marshmallow test just measures richness. Everyone else
needs to ship _something_ in three months for Demo Day.

