Life is Just One Big Marshmallow Test - Ep #86 Podcast Por  arte de portada

Life is Just One Big Marshmallow Test - Ep #86

Life is Just One Big Marshmallow Test - Ep #86

Escúchala gratis

Ver detalles del espectáculo

Acerca de esta escucha

Welcome to episode 86 of the One for the Money podcast. In the late 1960s and early 70s, a famous psychological study was conducted that has since been called the Stanford Marshmallow test. The study was designed to explore the concept of delayed gratification. In this episode, I’ll share how life might be considered one giant marshmallow test.

In the tips, tricks, and strategies portion, I will share a tip regarding how to not eat the entire marshmallow.

In this episode...

  • The Marshmallow Test [0:36]
  • Delayed Gratification in Personal Finance [2:23]
  • Investing Rewards Patience [10:01]
  • Teaching Financial Discipline [10:46]

In the late 1960s and early 70s, a psychologist named Walter Mischel at Stanford University conducted what has become a famous psychological study. The study was designed to explore the concept of delayed gratification — the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward in order to receive a larger reward a short time later.

Here is how the Experiment was set up:

600 preschool-aged children, roughly 4-6 years old, participated in the study. Each child was placed in a room with a marshmallow placed on a table. The researcher told the child that they could either eat the marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes without eating it. If they waited without eating the marshmallow, they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow.

The researcher then left the room, leaving the child alone with the first marshmallow.

The Key Findings as a result of this research were that Individuals had varied Self-Control: Some children immediately ate the marshmallow, while others were able to wait the full 15 minutes for the larger reward.

Now you might be wondering what a 4-6-year-old eating a marshmallow has to do with personal finance? Well, that’s what was most remarkable about this study was what the follow-up studies revealed. The outcomes were very successful at Predicting Future Outcomes: Over the subsequent decades, Mischel and his colleagues followed up with many of the children who participated in the experiment, and the results were astounding:

It found that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow, decades later, tended to have significantly better life outcomes in terms of higher SAT scores, lower rates of obesity, more likely to be financially stable as well as to have greater job satisfaction. The ability to delay gratification was a more accurate predictor of future success than their scores on an IQ test.

Now it should be noted that while the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment became a widely discussed study about the power of self-control, later research showed that the environment in which a child grows up, including factors like trust in caregivers, socioeconomic status, and stability, can influence how well they are able to delay gratification. For instance, children in more unstable environments may have less reason to trust that the promised later reward will actually come.

But suffice it to say, the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment remains one of the most influential studies in psychology, because it exposed the impact that self-control has on later life outcomes.

I’ve read about this study numerous times over the years, but recently it has led me to this thought: is life really just one giant marshmallow test? Is delaying gratification part of the better planning one needs to implement to have a WAY better life?

As I thought about this more, I came to the belief that generally speaking, life is one giant marshmallow test and that individuals can both learn and develop the skills so they too can have much better life outcomes. It also seems to me that businesses and politicians can hijack our desires for immediate gratification to their advantage.

Individuals...

Todavía no hay opiniones