The Marshmallow Test

TED Talks:

The Marshmallow Test

Joachim de Posada, the speaker of the talk, had reviewed the infamous marshmallow experiment. He was intrigued by the outcomes of the test held at Stanford, where one out of three children waited fifteen minutes before getting a second reward. Following up on these children in their later years of middle twenties, showed linear results. One hundred percent of the children who did not eat the marshmallow came to live successful lives based on their grades, educational attainment and other life measures. While the other two out of three came out to be not so successful and less happy. Joachim de Posada, was very interested in these results that he later decides to conduct his own experiment in Columbia. With no surprise he came to the same conclusion and results.

        This topic was briefly discussed in our class when we were learning over the chapter on Learning. But the relationship I see is not within that scope of that chapter, but along the lines of the Personality chapter. The discipline displayed by the children was a trait that they had developed through their upbringing and environment, and maybe even perhaps a genetic role had played part. Regardless, my perspective is solely within the perspective of the behaviorist view as well as the Trait theory view. For my contribution on the talk is what kind of home environment are these children come from or even what kind of belief are they raised up on? I believe these behaviors demonstrated by these children is an acquired trait of both a learned behavior and an embedded one, which is proposed by Trait theory. Perhaps these children were born to behave like this or perhaps they were born to be patient but somewhere along the lines they were molded to do and believe otherwise. Knowing what their environment and parents teaching style as well other upbringing factors could have played on the child’s decision. 

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