The Marshmallow Test

The idea

Around nineteen seventy, Walter Mischel and colleagues offered preschoolers a choice: one small treat now, or two if they could wait while the researcher left the room. Follow-up work by Mischel's group reported that children who waited longer at four went on to better academic performance and better health. Those findings travelled far beyond the laboratory, into claims that a young child's ability to wait predicts success in school, work and relationships. In twenty eighteen, Watts, Duncan and Quan re-examined the question. The associations they found were much smaller than the originals, and most became nonsignificant once they controlled for family background and early cognitive ability. A later study by Falk and colleagues found a positive but complicated link. The better-supported conclusion is that family circumstances and early abilities shape both a child's waiting and the child's later outcomes.