In its May 18th issue, The New Yorker's Jonah Lehrer offers a longer, more detailed and very interesting discussion of the marshmallow test--the one where kids who don't gobble down the marshmallow tend to do better in a multitude of ways throughout their lives.At the time, psychologists assumed that children’s ability to wait depended on how badly they wanted the marshmallow. But it soon became obvious that every child craved the extra treat. What, then, determined self-control? Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”
It's called metacognition, or "thinking about thinking," and it's what Odysseus had in mind with the Sirens when he tied himself to the mast. When the researchers gave the kids just a little metacognition training, the results were significant:
When he and his colleagues taught children a simple set of mental tricks—such as pretending that the candy is only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame—he dramatically improved their self-control. The kids who hadn’t been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes. “All I’ve done is given them some tips from their mental user manual,” Mischel says. “Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.
That's good news for any of us who set New Year's Resolutions, or are just trying to avoid the French Vanilla ice cream in the freezer this Memorial Day weekend.
0 Response to "Marshmallow Redux"
Post a Comment