Waiting for the prizes is it really good? Maybe not as much as we think

A new study shows that there is no association between the choice of late prizes and the results of life or with future emotional or behavioral problems

You may have heard of the Marshmallow experiment: a child enters a room, gets a single candy and makes a choice between eating now or waiting a little to earn two desserts. This test, performed for the first time in the 70s, became a symbol of the so -called “ability to postpone gratification”, being associated with school success, emotional stability and even better jobs in adulthood.

This idea has captured, being widely advertised in books, lessons, podcasts and media items. After all, in periods of high productivity, car strategies -control can be seen as virtue.

Similar activities try to understand the same principle using candies, points and gifts, such as the task of choosing the prizes (Choice delay activityCDT). On CDT, children choose between winning a small and immediate prize or waiting to receive something bigger. This task was mainly used to study impulsive behavior in children and in conditions such as hyperactivity attention deficit disorder (ADHD). These studies have shown that children with ADHD tend to prefer immediate prizes rather than late rewards.

The problem is that most of these studies have been conducted with small champions and in very specific contexts, usually clinicals or schools in Europe and the United States. And the results can be contradictory. While some studies show that children with ADHD prefer immediate prizes, others find no differences. In addition, longitudinal studies, or children who accompany over the years, are very rare. This type of study is necessary to understand if, in fact, this choice says something about future life.

Unpublished Brazilian study

This is exactly what we at Colab, a collaborative scientific initiative at PUC-Rio, with researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Ufrgs), University of San Paolo (USP) and Federal University of San Paolo (UNIFESP), we tried to investigate a study published in the diary of child psychology.

We use the data of the Basilian cohort at high risk for mental disorders, a large longitudinal study with children and teenagers of different socio -economic contexts in the cities of San Paolo and Porto Alegre. Overall, we analyzed 1,917 children, comparing their performance in Choice delay activity With the presence of mental disorders and results of life evaluated up to six years later, including school votes, alcohol consumption, pregnancy for adolescence, criminal convictions and body mass index (BMI). All these results were previously associated with the ability to delay gratification.

What do we find? Nothing. No association between the choice of late prizes and the results of life or with future emotional or behavioral problems. Children who preferred to wait if they didn’t get out better, not worse. In addition, children with ADHD behaved in a very similar way to others in the task.

These results check the assumption that being “less impulsive” guarantees success in life. They also challenge the idea that a single laboratory task may include complex trajectories such as education, health and social behavior. They also invite us to reflect on how much our psychological tests reflect the cultural contexts in which they have been created.

Other cultures

In one Recent study with the descendants of the MayaThe Marshmallow test did not work as expected: instead of patiently waiting for the candies, many simply leave the room. Why sit there when there were more interesting things to do?

So he concludes that these children have worse cognitive functions would be incorrect. After all, we are talking about children who know how to turn to the forest and in adverse environmental conditions. This challenges our idea what a “good knowledge” would be in standardized tests and underlines the importance of taking into account cultural contexts.

The tasks developed in the global North, in rich and industrialized countries, may not make sense in other realities, questioning both their validity and their reproducibility. Other researchers worried about these problems have recently published how the preference for immediate reward varies between different countries all over the world and varies widely.

For this reason, it is noteworthy that the original study of Marshmallow and children accompanied for ten years have been published in 1989 and included only 35 children, all of Day Care by Stanford. And from that moment on, they evaluated if they went better on standardized tests like Sat (equivalent to our refrigerator). This does not seem a very representative champion of the world population, right? Both in quantities and in a socio -demographic point of view.

You prefer a candy now or therefore it is not just a car measurement -contract. It can reflect experiences with scarcity, insecurity or simply different values.

And if we stop to think, it is not performance in a single laboratory task that will determine the end of your life. There are many variables in the real world, as a socio -economic and educational, which are highly relevant, above all considering the context of the unwary in which many Brazilian children live.

Perhaps much more important than the choice of a Marshmallow or points in a game are social and structural factors: access to education, financial stability, family support and national public policies aimed at childhood and adolescence.

Patricia Pinheiro Bado is a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Puc-Rio).

This content was originally published in The conversation. To read the original text, .

Source: Terra

Ben

Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.