this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 75 points 2 months ago

I would give you an upvote now, but I'd rather delay my gratification give you 2 later

[–] dbbljack@lemmy.world 54 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The original experiment boils down to being a zip code test anyway

Well, was it worth learning that about it?

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Double-blind placebo controlled randomized skin color test

[–] D_C@lemm.ee 31 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Itt:
People not seeing the marshmallow speak, or bite the kid. Or the horrified look on the kids face.

[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh my god THAT'S why his face is like that and THAT'S the joke. I really didn't get this comic.

[–] dryfter@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Took me D_C's comment to get it and even then it took me a minute to find the marshmallow and realize it wasn't on the plate anymore 🤦🏻

[–] Gestrid@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago

I knew it wasn't on the plate anymore.

I just didn't know it was GNAWING THE KID'S ARM OFF.

[–] Ideonek@lemm.ee 21 points 2 months ago

Turns out the test is only a good predictor of "how well you can trust the adults in your life to keep their words". Which tells more about the envirement than about the kid.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

A shower thought about the original experiment:

It may have only measured how effective "waiting for future gains" was, as a strategy, for each child, in their circumstance.

So the real discovery may be only that the children already had a pretty good idea how promising their own futures were. :(

[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Or hungrier kids (aka poorer kids) get the marshmallow first. Or those in greater need of serotonin (at least I think it's serotonin) you get from sugar, etc. There's a variety of issues here, but that's true of most "experiments" that aren't actually randomized controlled trial experiments.

[–] kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago

Or it measured how rare it was for them to get candy. The most interesting thing about the experiment is honestly the many ways in which it was flawed.

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[–] whelk@lemm.ee 17 points 2 months ago

Hobbes will avenge him

[–] waterbird@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

sometimes i think about that kid in the experiment
who was sat down and told to wait some time
before eating the sweetness put in front of him

that his patience would bring a reward

and i think about how they laughed when he didn’t succeed in waiting and instead
crammed the entire gummy bear into his mouth the second they left

looking so guilty afterward

the way they gloated and collected data and prognosticated about his future job prospects and potential success-
certainly not as good as those who waited, they said

it was something about self-control

i know all too well that when he got home
there were probably no sweets
or if there were, they were there for a moment only
before being snatched away by either cruel hands or circumstance
no guarantee that promises meant anything, much less that they were kept.

if it had been me in that chair
i’d have eaten it too.

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[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'd have the one just so I don't have to wait 5 minutes to get out of that weird ass test.

[–] sad_detective_man@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

the study didn't account that many kids assumed the guy was lying

[–] stupidcasey@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Ain't no marshmallow worth waiting 5 minutes for.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Store-bought marshmallows are one of those things where I only really want one.

There's an ice cream shop few towns over that makes fresh, exotic flavored marshmallows, depending on the day they're better than sex. But even those are about the size your fist and honestly two would be a little bit too much.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 4 points 2 months ago

You might want to try a different brand of sex tbh. It's gotta have serious issues to get beaten out by some fluffy sugar.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] 0101100101@programming.dev 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This experiment was not specifically about whether a kid would wait for the second marshmellow or not (which would be delayed by 20+ minutes), nor whether they would play with the roomful of toys, but to see how they grew up. The real test was to catch up with the adults and see how 'successful' they'd become. The experimenters found that those children who waited for the second marshmellow achieved higher grades and had more 'successful' better-paying careers.

It's the concept of delayed rewards vs immediate rewards and is prevalent in the world of machine learning.

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 31 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

A replication attempt with a sample from a more diverse population, over 10 times larger than the original study, showed only half the effect of the original study. The replication suggested that economic background, rather than willpower, explained the other half.

Work done in 2018 and 2024 found that the Marshmallow Test "does not reliably predict adult functioning".

It's great for a confirmation bias, but such a study is way too simplistic to really reach a conclusion. Oh, and:

The results seemed to indicate that not thinking about a reward enhances the ability to delay gratification, rather than focusing attention on the future reward.

[–] rapchee@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

later replications of the test showed that the difference between kids waiting or not, and successful or not was significantly related to their parents financial status, in other words, the broke kids ate the stuff that was in front of them, because they learned that promises are not always kept

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Such a silly experiment. You're gonna make them sit and be bored for five minutes with nothing else to do besides thinking about two marshmallows?

[–] Kamsaa@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

This is a cognitive task aiming to assess whether kids can trade a small reward now for a bigger one later (it tests inhibitory control and ability to project oneself in the future). This experiment was conducted by comparative psychologists and, if I recall well, they also compared the kid's performance to that of some primates to understand the evolution of the human mind.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 4 points 2 months ago

The best play is to eat the marshmallow immediately so that the experimenter moves onto the next test.

[–] potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish 3 points 2 months ago

Why is this slightly calvin but not quite

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 2 points 2 months ago

….will there be a new one every 5 minutes?

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