Dr Mischel's Experiment

My last semester of school, I took a class from Kerry Patterson, the author of Crucial Conversations and Influencer. In studying his book "Influencer" we learned about a social science experiment done by Walter Mischel years ago at Stanford University. He took children into a room and gave them a marshmallow and told them that if they ate it, that was ok, but if they could wait, they could have a second marshmallow. He followed these children for over 80 years and discovered that the children who could delay gratification "matured into adults who were seen as more socially competent, self-assertive, dependable and capable of dealing with frustrations; and they scored an average of 210 points higher on their SATs than people who gulped down the one marshmallow" (pg 116).

My sister and I decided to do this experiment on her children and my brother's children. While the boys all waited, the girls did not. And the videos were highly entertaining. We decided to use chocolate however because the kids had recently been eating marshmallows and we wanted it to be something special.

Two of my nephew's sat pretty patiently for the whole 5 minutes. These videos are edited for time sensitivity, and to edit out all of the nose picking.

My 5 year old nephew listened to his music the whole time. There is this one moment where he just got this horrible look on his face. I couldn't figure out if he had electrocuted himself or what.

Then the girls were just too funny to watch, they tried very hard but just couldn't wait. Of course I'm not sure it was a very fair competition between the boys and the girls since we all know it's much more difficult for girls to withstand chocolate. :) The one on the right ate the chocolate in the first minute and then stayed under the blanket for the next four minutes.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, there is a mirror on the left.... that's why they keep looking over there.