By now, you've probably heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. Most folks are familiar with this fifty-year-old study and its conclusions. In case this is the first you've learned of it, however, I'll give a quick review.
During the late 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel tested the willpower of young children (roughly four years old). A researcher would bring the children — one at a time — into a room where they had access to a selection of treats, including marshmallows. The children were told that they could eat have one treat right away or, if they waited fifteen minutes, they could have two. Then the researcher left the room.
While this study gave researchers an immediate glimpse at how children handle delayed gratification, it also yielded some interesting long-term results. In 1990, Mischel (and colleagues) reconnected with some of the kids from the marshmallow test to see how life had turned out for them.
This second study revealed that the children with the best self-discipline at four years old grew up to be more popular, more successful in school, and better able to handle stress. The kids with patience and willpower were less likely to turn to drugs and they were more physically fit. In short, the ability to wait fifteen minutes to earn an extra marshmallow as a preschooler seemed to be an excellent predictor of how well a child would be able to delay short-term gratification later in life in order to pursue long-term goals.
That's it. That's the marshmallow test. Seems simple, right? Yet this simple experiment has become one of the most oft-cited studies in the world of pop psychology. You'll find it in books about entrepreneurship, habit formation, decision making, and — yes — personal finance.
There's just one problem.
The NEW Marshmallow Test
New research shows that perhaps the link between childhood willpower and adult achievement isn't as strong as we once believed.
The new study — the full text of which is available for free, at the moment — attempts to remedy perceived flaws in earlier experiments. It uses a larger sample size, for instance, and draws info from a wider range of subjects. (The original studies used kids from the preschool on the Stanford campus, a relatively limited population.)
This new study found that yes, there was a correlation between the ability to delay gratification and future academic achievement. However, this correlation was only about half as strong as reported in the original marshmallow test.
Among kids whose mothers did not have a college degree, each extra minute a child was able to wait before eating a treat, his first grade achievement (how do you even measure that?) improved by roughly “one tenth of a standard deviation“. (To my mind, this still seems like a relatively substantial effect.) Academic achievement at age 15 showed a similar differentiation.
Among kids whose mothers did have a college degree, the correlation between childhood willpower and future academic achievement was much smaller.
The authors write:
“We observed that delay of gratification was strongly correlated with concurrent measures of cognitive ability, and controlling for a composite measure of self-control explained only about 25% of our reported effects on achievement. These results suggest that the marshmallow test may capture something rather distinct from self-control.“
What else might the marshmallow test be capturing? Interesting question. When looking at other variables tracked by the study, there seems to be a correlation between willpower and socioeconomic status. In households with higher income and greater education, kids waited longer before eating their marshmallows. (For more, see this recent article in The Atlantic.
Scarcity and Abundance
In college, I studied psychology. In the twenty-five years since I left school, I've spent a lot of time reading about psychology in my spare time. I'm fascinated by the human condition, by the things that shape us, motivate us, give us happiness and fulfillment.
No surprise then that when I write about money, I do so through a psychological lens. I used to find a lot of finance advice frustrating because it ignored psychology. The books I read seemed to assume that humans are purely rational creatures who make only logical decisions with money. These assumptions didn't match my reality.
This new interpretation of the marshmallow test — that childhood willpower may stem from socioeconomic status — fascinates me. It seems to be an concrete example of how our childhood environment helps to create our mental blueprints. (I believe we each possess mental maps — or “invisible scripts“, if you prefer — that guide our lives. Although I'm primarily concerned with your money blueprint here at GRS, I believe we have mental maps that guide us through many aspects of life.)
Although it's not a popular opinion, I believe there are very real differences between the rich and the poor. There are certain wealthy habits that lead to better odds of success with life and money. But here's the thing: If you're not raised in an environment where these habits are prominent — say you're the victim of systemic poverty and are never exposed to how wealthy people think and act — it becomes much more difficult to learn them.
For many people, poverty creates a scarcity mindset. This scarcity mindset can lead to all sorts of faulty financial habits.
A couple of months ago, Erynn Brook and Emily Flake published a visual essay at Longreads about the difference between being broke and being poor. The piece is short and interesting — you should read it! — but this passage, in particular, reminds me of the marshmallow test.
When you live with lack for a long time, it changes how you approach life. If you're a kid whose family has struggled to get by, when you're given a marshmallow, you're going to eat it now. (Can you really trust it'll be there later — let alone that you'll get the second one you've been promised?) If you were poor as a kid, when you manage money as an adult, a scarcity mindset can lead you to do things like immediately spend a windfall instead of saving it for the future.
My Money Blueprint
I think of my own family as an example. My brothers and I grew up poor. Our extended family had always been poor. My parents modeled the best habits they could, but they were limited by their own experiences (and mental blueprints). As a result, I entered adulthood with some faulty invisible scripts.
For instance, my parents taught us that windfalls were to be spent. Although they rarely had much money, when they did come into cash, they spent it. Quickly. And on frivolous things. They never modeled what it was like to save and invest for the future. This is the adult version of failing the marshmallow test.
Naturally, my brothers and I grew up with similar behavior patterns. None of us was poor — and my parents eventually escaped poverty — but we couldn't hold on to our money, either. When we had it, we spent it. We lived paycheck to paycheck despite decent salaries. (My youngest brother eventually lost two homes to foreclosure and had to declare bankruptcy.)
If I had participated in the marshmallow experiment as a four-year-old, I can guarantee I would have eaten the treat as soon as the researcher left the room. I'm nearing age fifty now and I still have to fight this sort of behavior. My scarcity mindset is real and it's damaging — even though I know it's present.
I'm not trying to use my money blueprint as an excuse for my behavior but as an explanation. I acknowledge that I'm responsible for my actions; I just want to know why I choose the actions that I choose.
For more on this subject, check out my article about how to master the abundance mindset (and change your money blueprint).
I visited my family last week and noticed this scarcity mindset with many of them. I guarantee if most of them came into a bunch of cash, they’d quickly spend it on some “toy”. I think part of that is simply that none of them have been shown any other way. They can’t see how that money could potentially be used to grow more money if they invested it. Humans will always behave in interesting ways for sure, but when so few people have even a basic grasp of how finances work, it leads to lots of problems for them as individuals, and to us as a society.
Thank you for bringing up the point that with the marshmallow experiment, you have to trust that the marshmallow will still be there for you later, and that there’s actually an additional marshmallow in the pipeline. Life teaches the kids of systemic poverty exactly the opposite.
I saw a discussion on Reddit’s povertyfinance (which I browse because I find tips for my student workers) about how the “standard” financial advice you see won’t allow you to save yourself out of poverty if you have a low-wage job that barely covers food, housing, and transit, but what it *will* do for you is teach you habits that keep you from digging yourself a deep hole and will let you get ahead when your ship finally comes in. But that’s the hard part … developing a new mindset and habits that don’t have an immediate/short-term payoff, but may take several months or years to bear fruit.
I like /r/povertyfinance. It’s pretty good for being such a new subreddit.
I am the oldest of four children of parents who never had a clue about money. And yes, when they got a windfall they went right out and blew it. My oldest brother and I grew up in a time of scarcity. The two younger brothers grew up in a time when my parents had more money because my dad got a better job. I saved every cent I could get my hands on, which wasn’t much. I still do. My brothers all tend to spend money if they’ve got it and not put it in the bank for other days. Today we’re all in our 60s and I still have more money than they do because I don’t spend every cent I get.
One of my brothers…. well, if they’d put him in front of a marshmallow he would have eaten it before the tester had even gotten out the door, on the grounds that the tester might never come back.
I totally agree. Where I run into a problem is when the conversation concludes “and that’s why poor people need lower expectations” instead of either “and that’s why it’s important to teach these skills [such as making economics a requirement for graduation]” or “that’s why expectations are, unfortunately, higher for kids with natural disadvantage [physical or learning handicaps included]”
Too much sympathy/empathy isn’t good for people.
Good stuff JD. The scarcity mindset is also prevalent with depression-era people such as my Mom. She’s 89 and even though she hasn’t gone “without” since the 1940’s that mentality never really left her psyche.
Yes, I thought of my Depression-era grandparents who were life-long savers to the extreme. I guess this is the other side of the “scarcity mindset” spectrum versus spending every windfall? Or because the Great Depression was an “economic event” rather than systematic poverty, it produced a generation with distinct money habits? So interesting to consider….
I wonder if this is a cultural thing. Has anyone tried this test outside of the US? I wonder if poor people in other countries can handle the marshmallow test better.
I like the new interpretation. People don’t act logically. We are very emotional. If you go through life thinking people will act logically, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Good post.
I found an article on NPR. They did the test on Cameroonian kids. They did much better although they’re poor. Pretty good read.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/07/03/534743719/want-to-teach-your-kids-self-control-ask-a-cameroonian-farmer
Interesting questions…but what poverty means will vary greatly from country to country. It’s not just a number, but also a set of cultural values and patterns.
I’m sure that 3rd world countries have people that survive on 1/4 of what Americans do, but I’m not sure that makes them impoverished unless they have a mindset akin to what JD is talking about.
“It’s not just a number, but also a set of cultural values and patterns.”
No, poor people are poor because they don’t have any money, or at least less than the amount required to maintain the local standard of living. There is no particular “set of cultural values and patterns” that will tell you if someone is poor, nor a particular “set of cultural values and patterns” that prevent someone from being poor.
I grew up in a large family.
If you didn’t eat one marshmallow and waited for two marshmallows you’d find that someone had eaten all three and you’d get none.
Maybe kids who are disadvantaged and know what hungers like can not afford to wait to see if a bigger prize is there if they wait.
One a different note, my son (18 months at the time) was presented with a marshmallow – but didn’t know what it was so didn’t eat one or two. :)
“This new interpretation of the marshmallow test — that childhood willpower may stem from socioeconomic status — fascinates me. ”
That isn’t what the new study found. It found there was no correlation between early childhood willpower, as measured by the marshmallow test, and teenager behavior.
Moreover the smaller correlation to later achievement the researchers said this:
“if you have two kids who have the same background environment, they get the same kind of parenting, they are the same ethnicity, same gender, they have a similar home environment, they have similar early cognitive ability,” Watts says. “Then if one of them is able to delay gratification, and the other one isn’t, does that matter? Our study says, ‘Eh, probably not.’”
And its important to remember that all statistical studies tell us something about the populations studied, not the individuals. There are more kids with the ability to delay gratification in one population than another. The new study says that ability doesn’t matter much at all to later success. Instead it is just a marker for other demographic attributes that do.
Exactly. I can guarantee that my first son at age 4 would have waited, while my second son at age 4 would have gobbled up the marshmallow in about 15 seconds.
My twin and I lived in a household where Mom worked 2 jobs and Dad worked 1 job. They saved money to the point where $10,000 was the limit of savings. The rest was spent. Whenever us kids asked for something, the answer was usually “no” or “wait until it goes on sale.” In our teens, we had jobs and my sister spent on clothes. I borrowed clothing and paid my bills.
In our 20’s, she had a spending problem. Every month, she would call a family member and ask for money to pay for the car lease. I paid my bills (like in our teens). Eventually, her car was going to be repossessed. Mom said she put enough money into that car and if it got re-po’d, she would lose all of that money. So Mom paid it off. I bought my used van for $4000 in full.
When Mom passed, my sister got all of Mom’s possessions. I was given the lovely gift of responsibility. I was responsible for my sister’s children’s money. I could invest it until they turned 18, at which point , it would be given to them for educational purposes. Um, yeah.
We do speak to each other about our plans/resources for retirement. They are both very different. I’m not sure if one is better than the other, but I guess we’ll find out.