Rethinking The Marshmallow Experiment

You might have heard of the famous “marshmallow experiment,” where social psychologists attempted to measure the long-term effects of practicing deferred gratification. In the classic version of this experiment, first conducted in 1972, young children were offered the choice between eating one marshmallow immediately, or two marshmallows if they could wait fifteen minutes.

It’s also called the time perspective experiment, because when we’re young we don’t always have a good sense of time. Fifteen minutes might sound like forever, or at least longer than we like to wait when something we want is right in front of us.

Supposedly, the children who were able to hold off on eating the first marshmallow right away were shown to be better savers later in life. They had higher test scores, more beautiful partners, and were more likely to live in gated communities.

I’m making some of that up. The point was: waiting is good, deferred gratification is an ideal to which we should aspire, and the kids who were able to successfully hold off on consuming the first sugar cube turned into model citizens.

As for the others—the ones who ate the first marshmallow right away—well, you never hear much about them.

It turns out that one of the children who ate the first marshmallow became a serial killer. Another withdrew to his parents’ basement and never resurfaced. A third is still stuck in the lab, refusing to leave until he gets a second marshmallow. 😱

Actually, that’s not quite right either—or to use the words of academic researchers, “the data are unclear.” We don’t actually know what happened to the other kids. All we know is that they never should have eaten that first marshmallow so soon. It was a fatal decision!

The story of the marshmallow test is used to encourage cautious behavior that delays rewards. Eat marshmallows now and your life is ruined. Hold off for 15 minutes and you’ll join the 1%.

Notice there is no third option. A four-year old is not allowed to say, I’d like both marshmallows, and I don’t want to wait. Give me the whole bag before someone gets hurt.

Asking for alternatives would disturb the experiment, and more importantly, create difficulty for the researchers. Perhaps there’s a world somewhere in which anyone can have their marshmallow and eat it too, but this is not your world. In the world you live in, your job is to be polite and wait your turn.

When will your turn arrive? Under the rules of the marshmallow test, it will be whenever someone decides the time is right.

The Game of Limited Options

Starting as a young child and continuing throughout your life, you’ll encounter the game of limited options. The rules of the game are straightforward: Someone will offer you a choice between undesirable choices, and you’re supposed to accept one of them. Just like the marshmallow test, the options you’re given are usually binary—also known as “take it or leave it.”

Here is a college course catalog. It lists various pathways to certification. There are no options to combine pathways, create your own certifications, or otherwise decide for yourself what you need to learn. Choose from the preselected categories. (Also, the college would like to pass along a request: “Please give us a lot of money, so you will be in debt and feel even more pressure to continue.”)

Here is how money works. Generally speaking, if you have a lot of money now, the odds are good that you’ll have even more in the future. Access to financing and favorable tax structures is typically awarded to those who have already accumulated wealth, not those who aspire to.

Here is a hot new social network. If you choose to use its service, it will gain access to all of your private messages. It will then mine data from your internet searches, and maybe even what it overhears you saying out loud when your phone is nearby, all in order to serve you the ads that provide the most profitable returns to its investors. Don’t want to agree to this exchange? Fine, but you’ll be missing out…

Each limited option comes packaged with costs that make it hard to reject the offer entirely. Sure, you don’t technically have to keep your money in the bank, which charges fees and keeps tabs on everything you buy—but do you really want to store your life savings under the mattress?

To simplify these matters, stick with the path of least resistance. You don’t technically need that hot new social app, but you also don’t want to miss out! It’s right there waiting for you. All you have to do is comply.

That’s what people say, at least. But of course, you can choose something different. You can reject the premise of the experiment altogether. You can grab both marshmallows now. You can eat the whole bag of marshmallows—or no marshmallows at all, if you prefer.

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