“Marshmallow Test” Redux: Children Show Better Self-Control When They Depend on Each Other
martyb writes:
For their study, researchers Rebecca Koomen, Sebastian Grueneisen, and Esther Herrmann, all affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, used a modified version of the "marshmallow test," a classic psychological experiment designed to examine young children's ability to delay gratification. In the classic experiment, preschool children were led into a room where a marshmallow or other treat was placed on a table. The children were told they could either eat the treat right away, or they could wait until the experimenter, who had to step out of the room, returned, in which case they'd receive a second treat. About a third of the children were able to wait for the second treat for up to 15 minutes.
In their new research, the researchers paired up more than200 5- and 6-year-olds and had them play a brief balloon toss game to getcomfortable in the testing environment. They then put the partners in separaterooms and placed a cookie in front of each of them. Some partners were assignedto a solo condition and only had to rely on their own self-control to earn asecond cookie, much like the traditional experiment. Others were placed in a cooperativecondition in which they received a second treat only if both they and theirpartner waited until the experimenter returned. Waiting in this condition was thereforerisky and indeed less likely to result in a second cookie because children hadto rely both on themselves and their partner to refrain from eating. Theauthors called this the interdependence condition. To identify any culturaldifferences in the responses, the researchers tested children at a laboratoryin Germany and went to schools in Kenya to test children of the Kikuyu tribe.
Across both conditions, Kikuyu children were more likely todelay gratification compared to their German counterparts. But across the twocultures, significantly more children held off on eating the first cookie inthe interdependence condition compared with the solo condition.
Journal Reference:
Rebecca Koomen, Sebastian Grueneisen, Esther Herrmann. Children Delay Gratification for Cooperative Ends, Psychological Science (DOI: 10.1177/0956797619894205)
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