Dr. Kentaro Fujita

So when you wait, you are more likely to get the larger later reward.

But if you come from a lower SES family where rewards come and go and people, and you know, just because you save now doesn't mean it's gonna pay off later.

they're not going to wait.

And so it's not as indicative for them.

So all of these things have to be carefully controlled for, and they were part of the original experiments.

Again, not really well articulated to the extent that you can create a situation where people do trust that they will get the larger later reward.

there does seem to be some predictive ability of this test.

Now, let me just say as a self-control researcher myself, I think people are missing the boat.

What is most interesting about the marshmallow test is not whether or not they can predict outcomes later.

That's very nice.

to convince people that self-control is important.

If I'm applying for federal grant money, for example, that's probably the first sentence that I write, that self-control predicts life outcomes.

There have been many, many other ways of testing this hypothesis, so I don't think we need to rely on the marshmallow test to make that point anymore.

The most important thing about the marshmallow test that gets completely overlooked goes back to something you said earlier, Andrew.

Is it an innate talent or is it something that we learn?

The most important experiments, Walter Mischel and his team were teaching children the strategies of self-control.

And when children learned them, their delayability got better.

That is a really, really important lesson because it suggests that self-control isn't something innate.

Instead, it's something that we learn over time.

Let me just give you an example.