Radio Lab: The Marshmallow Test
The always fascinating Radio Lab has a brief podcast this week about Walter Mischel‘s delayed gratification experiment with children, known as the marshmallow test. It seems that being able to delay gratification around the age of four has a strong correlation with success later in life.
Here is audio of the 15-minute Radio Lab podcast:
And here’s a TV news segment about a reenactment of the experiment:
More adorable video footage of the experiment is on the station web page.
Considering how my life has turned out, I bet I would’ve eaten the marshmallow, chewed the plate, unscrewed the table top from its base, and pulled the stones out of the bells.
Hi!
Today’s a date to celebrate: today I make 20.000 days; there are few ages that I consider to be very important: 10 years, 10.000 days (at 27 years) and 1.000.000.000 seconds (at almost 32); if you try to calculate other – in any time unit you can’t find others so round; at 1 you’re to young to understand at 100 to old to care; in weeks, months (you make 100 months at 8.3) you can’t find so wonderful times; I celebrated all of them.
I was (and am) very busy but I’ll try to call you more frequently.
Hear from you,
Dan
This would have been an easy test for me as I never liked marshmallows.
I never liked marshmallows either. The experiment has been replicated with M&Ms and Oreos, which would have been much harder to resist.
http://vimeo.com/5239013
Nice video, blaik.
I find it offensive that the speaker in the extended video has taken legitimate scientific evidence and twisted it into evidence for his own religious beliefs.