The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure? • Hacker News Board

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#151

Post by Retric » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #123

your-nanny wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under scarcity, in choosing which foods to buy, how tolerant are you to the risk of being hungry because you allocated too few dollars to calories rich foods? My guess is extreme risk averse.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198075/ The link between poverty and obesity in the modern world is well established. That means you can hardly point to a lack of energy consumption. I added a video to my comment, from a bio.chem course, that shows a common pathway how high energy state leads to obesity. Note that I can't and don't want to (and don't need to) show very much here, only provide an argumen…

The point about low calories is veggies are inherently an extra and not a staple. You need to add veggies to your diet and can't simply replace a plate of rice and beans with them.

The preference for low cost per calorie foods makes it easy to over eat when your body is missing some nutrient. Which can create offial feedback loops. But, the simple "how do I eat for 20$ this week" is IMO a factor at the individual and cultural level that should not be ignored.

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#152

Post by tankerslay » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

How is the marshmallow test (or "The Boy Who Ate the Marshmallow") different from "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? Both teach a lesson with a nugget of wisdom, the former about the perils of self-indulgence, the latter about the foolishness of sounding a false alarm. Both lessons are supported by numerous examples--far more than 90--that each of us has observed in our own lives. But one is presented as a self-contained fictional story, while the other is told as the result of an experiment that revealed some kind of natural law.

Why is our culture so drawn to presentations of basic life lessons as if they were the results of scientific experimentation? It's as if we have some sort of self-consciousness about "believing in" fables that drives us towards the telling of "fables-as-science".

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#153

Post by thedevil » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

> The failed replication of the marshmallow test

Actually, the result DID replicate here even though the experiment was slightly different. Other variables were introduced that might suggest additional explanations of the replicated result.

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#154

Post by lkrubner » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

About this:

"This new paper found that among kids whose mothers had a college degree, those who waited for a second marshmallow did no better in the long run—in terms of standardized test scores and mothers’ reports of their children’s behavior—than those who dug right in."

Since "standardized test scores" tends to measure IQ, it seems this can be re-phrased as "those who did well on the will-power test did not necessarily do well on the IQ test, and vice versa."

In other words, raw will-power is not correlated with raw IQ. Which I think I already knew? I've certainly known some athletes who were probably not as smart as me, but who definitely had more will-power than me.

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#155

Post by ouid » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

abainbridge wrote: post #9

> The researchers also, when analyzing their test’s results, controlled for certain factors—such as the income of a child’s household Is that a valid thing to do? If "will power" was a strongly inherited trait, and the theory is that will power leads to increase household income in adult life, then this controlling would remove most of the signal. The original paper relied partly on a questionnaire that asked the par…

did you read the rest?

all they did was stratify on income and the effect went away.

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#156

Post by fma » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #37

p1mrx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine it hard to conduct a controlled experiment when step 1 is "bake a pizza".

Presumably, you'd get the pizza from a pizza place. If you go for a national chain, you wouldn't even be restricted to testing kids all in the same location.

I would imagine a kid would think they would be full after the first slice and not care about the second.

It would be better for the test to have the child rank edible items they like. Then a few weeks later run the test.

But as a new father, I've learned that eating training will vary widely between families. Some families do not provide sweets as treats at all. Some will always provide it after every meal so the kids do not feel it is a reward or scarce resource. You can read up on the Satter method for details.

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#157

Post by htaunay » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #153

> The failed replication of the marshmallow test Actually, the result DID replicate here even though the experiment was slightly different. Other variables were introduced that might suggest additional explanations of the replicated result.

Agreed. If I understood correctly, the recent experiment possibly indicated that socio-economical factors can influence more the future "success" of a subject than other variables, e.g. delayed gratification.

The original experiment, by only containing children of the same socio-economical background isolated these variables, and achieved an orthogonal conclusion.

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#158

Post by ouid » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #153

> The failed replication of the marshmallow test Actually, the result DID replicate here even though the experiment was slightly different. Other variables were introduced that might suggest additional explanations of the replicated result.

Marshmallow willpower is still correlated with future success, but only because it is correlated with wealth. This means that there's isn't a causal link between eating marshmallow willpower and success. which is a different result, as the previous result included that as a possibility.

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#159

Post by jakobegger » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

abainbridge wrote: post #9

> The researchers also, when analyzing their test’s results, controlled for certain factors—such as the income of a child’s household Is that a valid thing to do? If "will power" was a strongly inherited trait, and the theory is that will power leads to increase household income in adult life, then this controlling would remove most of the signal. The original paper relied partly on a questionnaire that asked the par…

> this controlling would remove most of the signal

That's the whole point of controlling. If all of your signal can be explained by a correllation, then you aren't measuring what you think you are.

If "willpower" (waiting for second marshmallow) was important, it would be important regardless of whether your parents are rich or not. This means that among poor kids, those with willpower would be more successful, and among rich kids, those with willpower would be more successful.

The results of the follow up study show us that this is not the case. The important factor is your parents income, not your "willpower".

Re: The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

#160

Post by white-flame » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #106

fvdessen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is poverty really linked to food scarcity in western countries anymore ? The statistics show that overall, the poor are fatter than the rich.

1) Availability to "food" and availability to __healthy food__ are two different things. 2) Poverty creates perma-stress. It effects the body. It effects the mind. It effects decision making. Poverty is not sinply about income. It's much more complicated than that.

Seriously, who in western countries does not have availability to "healthy food"? Everybody has basic grocery stores with cheap simple stuff just as available to them as convenience junk shops.

It's education about how food affects you that makes all the difference. People literally don't know what they're putting in themselves. There's a lot of food purchasing decisions based on stressors related to your very reasonable 2nd point. Basic food education at a personal level brings people out of that particular negative health cycle.