science

Your ability to delay gratification is key to how much you earn throughout your life



The original marshmallow test, as it’s come to be called, was conducted by researchers led by Professor Walter Mischel, then at Stanford University, in the 1960s.

Professor Mischel’s original research is regarded as one of the most successful behavioural experiments. 

He put a marshmallow in front of children aged three to five and said they could eat it when he left the room.

But if they could wait for 20 minutes to have it, he said he would give them a second marshmallow.

He found that around a third of his subjects would grab the sweet immediately, a third would wait for his return to claim two marshmallows and the rest would try to wait but give up at varying times.

It wasn’t until 14 years later, when his earliest subjects were leaving school, that the psychologist began to confirm a correlation between the test results and success in life.

The children who took the sweet straight away turned into teenagers who lacked self-esteem and experienced difficult relations with their peers, it was found.

Those who waited for a second marshmallow turned out to be more socially competent, self-assertive and academically successful.

The boys and girls who waited even scored an average of 210 points more in their school exams than those who didn’t.



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