The Marshmallow Test

Today I stumbled upon this fantastic video of a psychology experiment called The Marshmallow Test, where kids had to decide if they would eat a marshmallow immediately or wait for a few minutes. In return for waiting, the kids would get a second marshmallow along with the first.

This experiment has several applications to the real world like the stock market and religion, but rather than go into it now let's just enjoy the video.



[or watch the Marshmallow Test on Youtube]

I found it interesting how kids would deviously pick off small pieces of the marshmallow after being told not to, and then lying about it to the woman afterwards. A book was published a little while ago (can't remember the title now unfortunately) where the author asked kids under age 10 questions like "what is marriage?" and "What is love?". The author's rational was that kids under age 10 could not lie. Apparently the author never thought to temp the all-knowing toddlers with a marshmallow.