Photo by Evan-Amos; shared on Wikimedia Commons
It’s summer camping season, and along with camping comes the tradition of S’mores.
This year, when I eat the marshmallows, I’ll be thinking of one of the greatest psychology experiments of all time. Commonly referred to as the “marshmallow study,” it was conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University in the 1960’s.
In the experiment, Mischel brought four-year-olds into a room, one at a time, and sat them down in a chair. On the table in front of them was a marshmallow. Mischel explained to each child that he was going to leave the room for a few minutes. While he was away from the room, the child could either (1) eat the marshmallow right away, or (2) wait until Mischel returned and then have two marshmallows. Then Mischel left the room for 15 minutes.
It turned out that many of the children could not delay gratification for the entire 15 minutes, and they ate the single marshmallow after Mischel left the room. But approximately 30% of the children were able to delay gratification and wait for the researcher to return to the room.
Eighteen years later, Mischel gathered data about the same children to find out how they were doing on a number of measures. Compared to the children who were able to delay gratification for the whole 15 minutes, the children who ate the marshmallow quickly had more behavior problems, struggled in stressful situations, had difficulties with attention, found it hard to maintain friendships, and got S.A.T. scores that were a full 210 points lower than the other group.
The moral of the story? The ability to wait, to delay gratification, and to control one’s impulses is an attribute that is essential for success in many areas of life.
Of course, this has implications for our financial behavior. Think about all of the occasions when we might benefit from waiting: waiting before making a large purchase; gathering all of the data about an investment option before jumping in; waiting for the magic of compound interest to do its thing.
What is the marshmallow that you are waiting for in the financial domain?
Send your ideas!
5 Responses to “Will Marshmallows Make You Better With Money?”
It seems like all of the people in the U.S. who are still hanging in there with the stock market despite the uncertainty of economic recovery are demonstrating their ability to wait for one giant marshmallow!
Since I am allergic to the ingredients in a marshmallow, I will still await my giant marshmallow to come in financially. Perhaps a long-range CD is the answer to receiving a giant marshmallow?
Loved the article; it has implications for several aspects in life, especially financial. Patience….
That’s amazing. I wonder if they did any followup work to look at the net worth 20 or 30 years later of the kids who ate the marshmallow versus the kids who were able to wait?
@Kathy M: That’s a great question. I’m not sure if they looked at net worth of the marshmallow kids when they became adults. But there are other studies out there examining the link between self-control and financial stability. In one large-scale study, researchers followed the lives of 1,037 individuals from New Zealand from the time they were 3 years old until they were 32 years old. When the participants were young, the researchers observed them and gathered information about their level of self-control from their teachers and parents. They continued to follow these children during adolescence and then again in adulthood to see how they were doing on a number of measures of personal, social, and financial success. In the end, the results showed that childhood self-control was a good predictor of health, prosperity, and financial security in adulthood. Thanks for your comment!
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