The Marshmallow Experiment

Back in the late 1960s, Walter Mischel, a Stanford University psychologist, conducted a psychological experiment known as the Marshmallow test. The experiment was conducted at the Stanford University nursery. He wanted to understand the concept of delayed gratification in a small child between the ages of 4 and 6. The idea was to create a situation for the child to choose between a small reward now and a large reward later, thus causing a conflict situation. They were deliberately placed in a room with no mental stimuli, which allowed them to see if the children could distract themselves from the reward. Even though many people refer to this experiment as the Marshmallow test, the child could choose other foods like a cookie or pretzels. In …show more content…
Drive can be described as a tension of behavior that causes you to fulfill a need. Therefore, the drive that the child needed to meet was one of hunger. In fact, one may call the pain of hunger a primary drive. Primary drives are the basic needs for a human to survive, which are hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex. There is a secondary drive that is a learned from experience that further brings about needs. About one third of the children were able to delay gratification. These children learned to listen to their secondary drive of motivation. The child learned there is a greater reward for delaying their behavior, instead of giving in to their primary drive. In this case, the child is rewarded with a larger amount of food, than just getting a smidgen of food. In fact, the child may have the need to make the adult happy by behaving in a “good manner” by not giving in to the urge to eat the food right away. The idea of making the adult happy is a learned behavior, thus making it a secondary drive. However, the other possible motivation for the child delaying gratification is the fear of making the adult angry. Yes, the child is given a choice about eating the food now or later, but the experience with adults has taught them to be fearful of making an adult angry, by not behaving as they were …show more content…
The child can learn to delay their gratification if they understand their emotions. In fact, Walter Mischel has helped to prove the very fact that a child can learn to delay gratification. With a handful of the children who were unable to delay gratification for less than five minutes, then the experimenter gave those children the suggestion to put a picture frame around the object that they want. In the majority of the children, the child was able to delay their gratification for the extra reward. The child learned if they are feeling anxious, curious, boredom, or impatience- it can be deterred by placing it in a picture frame, which then caused the object of their desire to be just a picture and not real. The use of imagination is powerful tool that can be utilized to help visualize a reward. The long-term study showed that the children who could delay gratification had better test scores, less drug use, and higher paying positions. The key idea one must understand is that delayed gratification is a teachable skill, which can benefit society as a