The Marshmallow Test Revisited • Hacker News Board

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#31

Post by Evbn » Sun, Oct 14, 2012, 2:34 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #28

MattGrommes wrote: post #18

In watching my kids grow up I'm always struck by my inability to figure out why they did certain things. They obviously had reasons but when questioned those reasons were regularly things I would have never thought of. I always felt it was a bit like anthropomorphizing animals to make deductions about their behavior. You might think you have a good hypothesis but it's very difficult to know that you're working with t…

The more I read about psychology/rationality, the more I realize that what you're saying is also true about ourselves . We regularly do things that don't make sense, and have only vague, and often wrong, ideas about why we did what we did. Except that our brain is amazingly good at self-delusion, making us believe that there were reasons behind it all.

There are almost always reason, but not always conscious rationality. Emotions in the limbic system are sort of like the analog machines of old, before digital logic computers, as a weak analogy.

What is often ignored is that rational decision making depends on priorities and estimations of prior probability, and these vary wildly based on circumstance.

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#32

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Oct 14, 2012, 2:54 PM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #12

jonnathanson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that's a tempting conclusion, it's a tough to justify. The original experiment didn't study or account for the parental variable, so it's impossible to tell what effect it may, or may not, have had "behind the scenes." It's entirely possible that the reliability of adults is a factor in developing a child's impulse control. It's also possible that it's a significant factor. But we'd have to design experiments t…

>Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the variable being studied in the original experiment, impulse control, was actually just a red herring disguising parental reliability as the true factor. The variable being studied was weather or not the children would wait for the second marshmallow, and that the children who did wait did better in life. I suspect that everyone would agree that this is not an casual relationshi…

The article doesn't actually say the unreliable adult was the same one offering marshmallows. Maybe the subjects (children) extrapolated from one recent adult interaction to all adult interactions. You'd then have to hypothesize Every adult in contact with a child, even incidentally, had a profound effect on a child.

Fortunately its not clear the effect is long-lasting. Small children have the attention span of a fish.

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#33

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Oct 14, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

Evbn wrote: post #31

edanm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I read about psychology/rationality, the more I realize that what you're saying is also true about ourselves . We regularly do things that don't make sense, and have only vague, and often wrong, ideas about why we did what we did. Except that our brain is amazingly good at self-delusion, making us believe that there were reasons behind it all.

There are almost always reason, but not always conscious rationality. Emotions in the limbic system are sort of like the analog machines of old, before digital logic computers, as a weak analogy. What is often ignored is that rational decision making depends on priorities and estimations of prior probability, and these vary wildly based on circumstance.

I'd like to agree; but the conclusion "Irrationality is observed; sometimes I find out its based on emotion: All irrationality is based on emotion" is not warrented. Its possible people make bad decisions because they're bad-decision-makers. Or maybe something else, I don't know.

Re: The Marshmallow Test Revisited

#34

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Oct 14, 2012, 3:02 PM UTC

peng wrote: post #24

What if the child didn't much care for marshmallows, and reasoned that spending 15 minutes of their life waiting for an extra marshmallow was an incredible waste of time?

Funny; but seriously the kids enter the room knowing "Im taking part in a serious Adult study of my behavior." They likely try to behave as they're expected to behave. The real test is, how soon does the feeling of obligation decay to the point that the appeal of a marshmallow (admittedly insignificant) outweights the desire to please.

My Sister took her youngest to an experiment where, in the waiting room they put the kid in a room with toys on a table, and took her to 'do paperwork'. The boy was told to leave the toys alone.

Really she went to the observation room. They simply timed how long it took for the bored child to play with the toys.

See, by testing the child 'before the test started' they avoided pre-loading the kid. They changed-up the test by having other kids and adults enter the room and play with the toys, or repeat the admonition, or whatever.

The