
Cognitive and Attentional Mechanisms in Delay of Gratification (1972) - micaeloliveira
https://fermatslibrary.com/s/cognitive-and-attentional-mechanisms-in-delay-of-gratification#email-newsletter
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md224
It’s interesting that “fun” thoughts increased the delay while “sad” thoughts
shortened it. This makes complete sense to me... the fun thoughts increased
the momentary happiness of the participant, while the sad thoughts decreased
it. The impulse to take a short-term reward is driven by a thirst for pleasure
in one who is lacking it.

A man lost in the desert will stop at the first oasis he finds. It’s hard to
resist something when we’re in dire need of it. This is an important factor in
the process of addiction.

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balnaphone
Readable PDF link

[http://www.viriya.net/jabref/cognitive_and_attentional_mecha...](http://www.viriya.net/jabref/cognitive_and_attentional_mechanisms_in_delay_of_gratification.pdf)

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trevyn
Submitter is one of the people behind Fermat's Library, which is an
interesting idea, but yeah, the site's scrolling is completely broken for me.

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alfonsodev
I became interested in this topic after listening to David Goleman, he has
nice talks [1] on Youtube about emotional intelligence, one of them at
Google[2], he often mentions in his talks about the marshmallow experiment and
how it predicted success on long-term better than grades.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=david+goleman+e...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=david+goleman+emotional+intelligence)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hoo_dIOP8k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hoo_dIOP8k)

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randomdrake
Study: Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification

Citation: Mischel, Walter; Ebbesen, Ebbe B.; Raskoff Zeiss, Antonette.
American Psychological Association Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology Vol 21. Issue 2. 204-218. 1972.

Link: [https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032198](https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032198)

DOI: 10.1037/h0032198

Abstract: Three experiments investigated attentional and cognitive mechanisms
in delay of gratification In each study preschool children could obtain a less
preferred reward immediately or continue waiting indefinitely for a more
preferred but delayed reward Experiment I compared the effects of external and
cognitive distraction from the reward objects on the length of time which
preschool children waited for the preferred delayed reward before forfeiting
it for the sake of the less preferred immediate one. In accord with
predictions from an extension of frustrative nonreward theory, children waited
much longer for a preferred reward when they were distracted from the rewards
than when they attended to them directly Experiment II demonstrated that only
certain cognitive events (thinking "fun things") served as effective
ideational dis- tractors Thinking "sad thoughts" produced short delay times,
as did thinking about the rewards themselves In Experiment III the delayed
rewards were not physically available for direct attention during the delay
period, and the children's attention to them cogmtively was manipulated by
prior instructions While the children waited, cognitions about the rewards
significantly reduced, rather than enhanced, the length of their delay of
gratification Overall, atten- tional and cognitive mechanisms which enhanced
the salience of the rewards shortened the length of voluntary delay, while
distractions from the rewards, overtly or cogmtively, facilitated delay The
results permit a reinterpretation of basic mechanisms in voluntary delay of
gratification and self-control.

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gt_
It seems important to me that we be sure to ask some questions of what the
"task" consists of, and the effects of variable tasks, before making too much
use of this.

