One of the most famous experiments is psychology is the marshmallow test.  The test was conducted around 1970 by Walter Mischel, a pychologist at Stanford.  The experiment consisted of placing a marshmallow in front of a four year old, and informing them that they could have one marshmallow now, or they could wait while the person conducting the experiment left the room.  If they didn’t eat the one marshmallow placed in front of them until the return the psychologist than they could have two marshmallows.  In videos of the experiment you can see children going to extreme lengths to avoid consuming the marshmallow.  The children shift in their seats, hide their eyes and even bang their heads upon the table, all in an effort to avoid eating the marshmallow.  In one trial an Oreo was used instead of a marshmallow, and one of the boys took the Oreo apart, ate filling and then set it back down.

The real breakthrough of the marshmallow test was it revealed exactly how important learning self-control as a child can be to creating future success.  Children who could wait longer before eating the marshmallow had better social skills in middle school as well as higher SAT scores, college completion rates, and incomes. The marshmallow test actually turned ended up being a more accurate predictor of SAT scores than IQ tests. Children who could not wait as long before they ate the marshmallow had a higher incarceration rates and were more likely to struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.

But why did some of the children in the experiment have more self control than others?  The children who were able to wait before they ate the marshmallow had usually come from more stable homes, while children who ate the marshmallow immediately were more likely to have more stressful home lives.  Kids also did better if they did not look right at the marshmallow, if they were able to distract it they found it easier to avoid giving into temptation and eating it.  Later, Mischel extended the experiment by having children use their imagination.  If they imagined that they were looking at a picture of a marshmallow or a could wait about three times longer than children who did not.  By imagining the marshmallow as something else, the children were able to use different, less impulse oriented pathways in their brains.  So the marshmallow test played an influential role in explaining the importance of self-control.

Source: Brooks, David. The Social Animal. Pine Street, U.K.: Short, 2011. Print.