Children will wait to impress others -- another twist on the classic marshmallow test

Date:
September 10, 2020
Source:
Association for Psychological Science
Summary:
When it comes to self-control, young children are better able to
resist temptation and wait for greater rewards if they take into
consideration the opinions of others.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
If you asked people to name a famous psychology study, the
"marshmallow test" would probably come out near the top of the
list. In this task, young children are told they can immediately
get a small reward (one marshmallow) or wait to get a bigger reward
(two marshmallows). Researchers have shown that the ability to wait is associated with a range of positive life outcomes, including higher SAT
scores more than a decade later.


==========================================================================
A new study published in the journal Psychological Science expands on
this earlier research and shows that young children will wait nearly
twice as long for a reward if they are told their teacher will find out
how long they wait.

"The classic marshmallow test has shaped the way researchers think about
the development of self-control, which is an important skill," said
Gail Heyman, a professor at the University of California San Diego and
lead author on the study. "Our new research suggests that in addition to measuring self-control, the task may also be measuring another important
skill: awareness of what other people value. In fact, one reason for
the predictive power of delay-of- gratification tasks may be that the
children who wait longer care more about what people around them value,
or are better at figuring it out." For their study, Heyman and her
colleagues from UC San Diego and Zhejiang Sci- Tech University conducted
two experiments with a total of 273 3- to 4-year-old children in China.

The researchers told the children that they could earn a small reward immediately or wait for a bigger one. Children were assigned to one of
three conditions: a "teacher" condition, in which they were told that
their teacher would find out how long they wait; a "peer" condition,
in which they were told that a classmate would find out how long they
wait; or a "standard" condition that had no special instructions.

Children waited longer in the teacher and peer conditions than in the
standard condition, and they waited about twice as long in the teacher condition as compared to the peer condition.

The researchers interpreted the results to mean that when children
decide how long to wait, they make a cost-benefit analysis that takes
into account the possibility of getting a social reward in the form of
a boost to their reputation. These findings suggest that the desire to
impress others is strong and can motivate human behavior starting at a
very young age.

The researchers were surprised by their findings because the traditional
view is that 3- and 4-year-olds are too young to care about what other
people think of them.

"The children waited longer in the teacher and peer conditions even
though no one directly told them that it's good to wait longer," said
Heyman. "We believe that children are good at making these kinds of
inferences because they are constantly on the lookout for cues about what people around them value. This may take the form of carefully listening
to the evaluative comments that parents and teachers make, or noticing
what kinds of people and topics are getting attention in the media."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Association_for_Psychological_Science. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Fengling Ma, Dan Zeng, Fen Xu, Brian J. Compton, Gail
D. Heyman. Delay of
Gratification as Reputation Management. Psychological Science,
2020; 095679762093994 DOI: 10.1177/0956797620939940 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200910110826.htm

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