Researchers wondered if children would delay gratification when conditionally presented rewards rather than immediate rewards.
In 1970, this experiment with preschool children wanted to measure the level or lack of cognitive ability of children to delay pleasure. Then let’s look at the details of this experiment together.
At the first stage, the experiment was started with a participant group consisting of 56 children. To get the kids used to the experiment, the researchers first played some games with them.
Distributing the children into five groups from A to E, the researchers took each of them to separate rooms. Children in groups A, B and C were given a marshmallow.
What happened next was interesting. The children were told that the experts would leave the rooms for a while and then return. It was stated that if they waited for them, they would be given another marshmallow in front of them. But psychologists also expressed that children could eat the candy immediately if they wanted to. However, those who ate immediately did not have the right to a second nap.
The waiting time was 15 minutes. So what happened after this time passed?
Children in groups A, B, and C, who showed sufficient patience, were able to eat two marshmallows. Children who did not wait and gave up did not get a second nap as stated at the beginning. Children in groups D and E were not served anything. After the 15-minute period, all children were allowed to play with the toys. Then, while the children were playing with the toys, they were asked to think of fun things. This could be things like singing and thinking about different types of games.
After observing for a while, the experts decided to exclude some children from the experiment. Because some did not understand the directions of the experts, that is, they did not follow the instructions. Therefore, it was decided that it was appropriate to continue the study with 50 children.
Then the very surprising second part of the experiment was started.
It was stated that experts will leave the room, as in the beginning, for 50 children. The children were then told that they could play with the toys after waiting for 15 minutes, whether they rang the bell or not. Of course, it must be really hard for them to put small children in a room full of toys and say “you can play with them after this long”. On the other hand, the results revealed that the children who were included in the groups A, B and C and waited for two sweets for 15 minutes were more patient than the other groups.
In another stage of the experiment, the children were divided into three groups and they were again offered marshmallows. However, during this waiting period, each group was asked to think differently.
Group A was told to think about fun things, group B about sad things, and group C to think of sweet food soon. The logic was still the same. If they waited for 15 minutes without calling the experts, the number of rewards they would get increased, if they did not wait, they could not earn anything extra. As a result, it was seen that the children in group A waited longer than the other groups.
Mischel and his team aim to leave the instant pleasure of children for later; He suggested that they can learn by ignoring the source of pleasure or by thinking about positive things independent of the topic. According to experts, postponing the feeling of obtaining instant gratification was also dependent on this type of cognitive activity. In other words, it was necessary to adopt the philosophy of “either you will avoid the object of desire or suppress the desire for it”.
In other experiments on this, it was found that children who internalized the idea of achieving longer-term gains without feeling a moment of pleasure were successful in patience.
In another study led by psychologist Tyler Watts, a group of 900 children was examined.
Each of these children had a different ethnic origin, socioeconomic status and parental structure. In this study, the relationship between children’s socioeconomic status and delaying gratification behavior was examined.
The results were quite striking. You ask why? Because experts said that positive results cannot always be obtained from delayed gratification behavior. So, we can say that this was the opposite of what Mischel et al. Watts’ team described being able to wait to receive a second marshmallow reward as a condition determined by the child’s social and economic background.
Simply put, we can say that the importance of the family factor in children’s behavior cannot be ignored. For example, in the study, it was seen that children who were not financially well off were more impatient waiting for a second nap. According to experts, this was due to poor children’s lives being more precarious than rich children’s. In other words, it was thought that someone who was not well behaved with the logic of “if I find food today, I will eat it, tomorrow if I cannot find food, I will starve”.
In short, we can say that waiting is a risk for those with a low socioeconomic level. You ask why? Because the parents of these kids might never get them candy. In other words, academics stated that it is not the right attitude to say that these children have low self-control skills. It was observed that the children of well-educated and well-educated families delayed gratification more easily. However, the researchers attributed this easy situation to them precisely to these economic and status reasons.
Because that marshmallow wasn’t the food these kids needed, their parents had the opportunity to buy them any other snacks they wanted. And other similar studies have found that children of poor parents are more likely to crave this type of snack than children of wealthy parents.
In the end, the different perspectives offered by the two studies show that: According to the first study, children who delay instant gratification in order to receive a reward may be considered to be more successful in adulthood than those who cannot wait for the reward. Or we can say that for children who can wait for a second nap, their self-control skills are higher and they manage to not be influenced by external factors. In fact, we can also state that in this experiment, the message that it would be positive to postpone the pleasure for a short time for more pleasure was intended to be given.
However, when we look at the second research, it can be seen that the inferences of the previous research are insufficient. Because when comparing children, we can understand very well that we should not evaluate them only with their child identities, when we consider the social factors such as family, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and education level that build this identity.
In other words, making a generalization that the pleasure that is postponed or not postponed in childhood will always give the person a gain in the future, unfortunately, may not be valid for every individual. In fact, through such experiments, we see the importance of thinking that different dynamics can also be involved when generalizing about a subject.
- Sources: Simply Psychology, The Atlantic
- Image Sources: Inc. Magazine, Behavioral Scientist, Medium, Uplifers
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