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The Marshmallow Test: What Does It Really Measure?

theatlantic.com

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

#31

Post by golergka »

orbifold wrote: post #22

I've come across variations of this conclusion many times now: That it is really your parents affluence and educational background that predicts your success in school and how much you will earn in the future. This is often portrayed as being unjust. To me it always seemed obvious that children with affluent and well educated parents are more likely to be intelligent, have good self-control and other traits that are…

It's only unjust if you define a person's desire to help his children above others as unjust.

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

#32

Post by niklasd »

Another example of studies that seem to be hard to dublicate is about the concept of priming [0]. I think sometimes the non-scientific community picks up an idea which just seems so good and starts to apply it to an array of life sitations, while the idea itself might be limited to a small amount of sitations/conclusions. Especially with priming, I read some hair-raising statemens from laymen, about how priming seems to explain virtually everything.

It also happens to scientists, of course, but they tend to be a bit more careful and stick a little closer to the original experiment (which itself might not be evidence enough for the conclusion).

[0] https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...

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

#33

Post by wombat92 »

I was always skeptical of the marshmallow test. It let too many questions open on why children eat the marshmallows. Was it because they hadn't eaten before and came to school with low blood sugar, knew that waiting fifteen minutes for two sweets the price of a penny is idiotic or that they felt uncomfortable in the room and wanted to leave as early as possible?

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

#34

Post by thaumasiotes »

Smaug123 wrote: post #20

I found the following post [1] to make a very compelling argument that the Marshmallow test isn't really testing for the ability to defer gratification, but for a "generalised ability/desire to take and pass tests" (manifesting itself here as the desire to pass the Marshmallow test). The post argues that this is an underrecognised character trait which can predict success in today's Western test-oriented world. Certa…

> Certainly I personally possess this trait in spades, and my personal history is full of instances where this trait was extremely useful to me.

I love taking tests. Sadly, this has essentially never been any use.

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

#35

Post by taneq »

mongol wrote: post #6
taneq wrote: post #3

I wonder how you'd control for the fact that the Marshmallow Test is widely known and that parents may have explicitly trained their children on similar problems in the hope that they'll benefit later from the ability to delay gratification?

Can't see why you would want to control for it.

What's the saying? "The moment you turn a measure into a target it ceases to be a good measure"?

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

#36

Post by taneq »

zeth___ wrote: post #4
taneq wrote: post #3

I wonder how you'd control for the fact that the Marshmallow Test is widely known and that parents may have explicitly trained their children on similar problems in the hope that they'll benefit later from the ability to delay gratification?

If you think poor people have time for doing that you haven't been poor.

So maybe well-off people score better on the test because they have time to teach their kids some self-restraint, not because they're genetically better able to resist marshmallows?

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

#37

Post by thaumasiotes »

p1mrx wrote: post #18
newman8r wrote: post #8

Who cares about an extra marshmallow? They should do the experiment with slices of pizza.

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.

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

#38

Post by yasp »

popnroll wrote: post #28
yasp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So rather than try to improve the science we should just ignore the question?

It can be argued that gratification delay is more psychology related than genetics. And while it can be found a pattern on genes, probably it will be falsified like happened before with these kind of experiments.

How could you possibly argue that without studying the question?

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

#40

Post by [deleted] »

lagadu wrote: post #26
finolex1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's closely related to research on the genetic basis of intelligence. Poor research on these topics in the past have been used to justify rather egregious social policies (eugenics, birth control, racial discrimination, etc). Even if it is heritable, making the knowledge public can only lead to a sense of fatalism.

Doesn't matter, more knowledge is always to our advantage; not being politically correct is a terrible reason for withholding information. We'll never get better by burying our heads in the sand.

[deleted]
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