The key ideas

The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control

Walter Mischel, 2014

A child is offered one marshmallow now or two after waiting. The experiment’s creator explains how children managed to wait, which self-control techniques adults can borrow, and what happened to the children decades later. Also included is a test involving hundreds of other children that substantially changed the picture after the book appeared.

Who it is for

For anyone who struggles to resist temptation, for parents and teachers, and for anyone who has heard of the marshmallow test and wants to know what it actually showed.

The ability to delay immediate gratification for future consequences is a cognitive skill that can be learned.

What the book is about

A four-year-old is offered a choice: one treat now or two after waiting. This simple experiment at Stanford’s nursery school became perhaps the best-known willpower experiment.

Its creator, Walter Mischel, explains how children managed to wait, what happened to them decades later, and which techniques adults can borrow. The book is partly a scientist’s account of his research and partly his model of self-control.

Ahead are a marshmallow in a frame, two systems in the mind, a cigarette that became disgusting, and a test involving hundreds of other children that substantially changed the picture after publication.

Idea 1. One now or two later

The late 1960s, Bing Nursery School at Stanford. A child of around four or five sits at a table with a treat, such as a marshmallow. An adult explains: eat one now, or wait until the adult returns and receive two. If waiting becomes too much, ring the bell and receive just one. The adult leaves; researchers watch through a one-way mirror.

Researchers also wanted to know exactly how children waited. Some turned away or shut their eyes; others sang quietly. Someone played their toes like piano keys. Another whispered “If I wait, I get both; if I don’t, only one.”

Mischel noticed that children who found ways not to look at the treat often lasted longer. Staring at it determinedly and enduring the temptation worked less well.

Instead of spending the evening “just not picking up” the phone from the table, you take it into another room and put it face down.

Waiting ability in this experiment is visible in where a child looks and how they occupy themselves. It therefore seems likely that specific techniques can train it.

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About the author

Walter Mischel (1930–2018) was an American psychologist born in Vienna who emigrated to the United States with his family as a child. He worked at Stanford and Columbia, devised the marshmallow test, and studied self-control and personality for many years.

All books by this author: Walter Mischel

Terms from the book

  • Hot system: In Mischel and Metcalfe’s model, a fast emotional response to what is directly before us. The authors’ model rather than a separate brain region.
  • Cool system: In Mischel and Metcalfe’s model, slower, reflective thinking that can consider consequences and goals. The authors’ model rather than a separate brain region.
  • If–then plan: An advance decision connecting a specific situation to a specific action. It may make following an intention easier during temptation, without guaranteeing it.
  • Psychological distance: Viewing a situation as though from outside or from farther away in time. In studies Mischel cites, this perspective helped people become less immersed in an experience on average.
  • Conceptual replication: Testing the idea of an earlier study with new data and different methods rather than repeating the experiment exactly.

All terms

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