On a recent supermarket trip, I was dismayed when my 90-year-old friend started opening up a box of luxury chocolates. I explained that we would pay for them at the end of our visit and have one on the way home. She became agitated and demanded a chocolate immediately!
This reminded me of the classic ‘Marshmallow Test’ conducted in the 1960s by Walter Mischel. The test measured the ability to postpone an immediate reward in favour of a later and better reward. Mischel called this ‘delay of gratification’ (DoG). Preschoolers were shown a single marshmallow and told ‘You can have this marshmallow now or, if you can wait until I come back, you can have two marshmallows’. Only a third of the preschoolers were able to wait a full 15–20 minutes to receive two marshmallows.
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