It’s arguably the most well-known psychology experiment.2 Over a six-year period, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel brought 653 young children from the university’s Bing Nursery School into a room and offered them a tasty treat of their choice: marshmallow, Oreo cookie, or pretzel stick. But he also presented them with a dilemma. If they could resist eating the treat while he stepped out for several minutes, they would get a second treat as a reward. The children were then left alone. The experiment was a simple test of impulse control: the ability to manage one’s emotional arousal, excitement, and desire. Most of the kids gave in and ate the treat, usually in less than three minutes. But about 30 percent held out. Years later, Mischel gathered more data from the same children—who were then in high school. He was stunned to learn that their choices in the experiment predicted a broad range of outcomes. Children who had waited were more socially skilled, better able to cope with stress, less likely to have emotional outbursts when frustrated, and better able to deal with temptations, and had closer, more stable friendships than those who hadn’t waited. They also had substantially higher SAT scores. Why was “the marshmallow test” such a powerful predictor of long-term personal and interpersonal outcomes? Because it taps a critical skill: the ability to constructively manage emotions.
2The information that follows is adapted from Goleman (2007b); Lehrer (2009); and Shoda, Mischel, and Peake (1990).