Don Siegel
What does eating Marshmallows have to do with youth
development? This sounds like a trick
question, but in reality, it turns out that marshmallow eating and youth
development work are intricately connected. How so, one may ask?
A new book entitled “The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control”
by psychologist Walter Mischel tells us about a research program started
decades ago with preschoolers. In the paradigm that he, colleagues, and his
students used, children were told that they could either eat one marshmallow now,
or get two marshmallows if they were willing to wait a few minutes. This was a
test of what he labeled “delayed gratification”, or impulse control. As might
be expected, some children attacked the marshmallow immediately, but some also
were willing to wait in order to get the promised two marshmallow reward. While
he writes about how those who waited were able to do so, what really makes this
research so interesting is that children in both groups were tracked over decades
to determine whether those who were able to “delay gratification” differed from
those who opted for “immediate gratification”. What he found is quite
astounding. Years later, as adolescents, those who delayed gratification, had “…higher SAT scores,
social competence, self-assuredness and self-worth, and were better
able to cope with stress, more likely to plan ahead, and more
likely to use reason. They were less likely to have conduct
disorders or high levels of impulsivity, aggressiveness and hyperactivity. As
adults, the high delayers were less likely to have drug problems or
other addictive behaviors, get divorced, or be overweight.”
Clearly, being able to control one’s impulses, and in this case,
delay gratification and forego immediate rewards in order to gain even more
powerful rewards at some future time is a core capacity that permeates just
about everything that we do in youth development programs. This is because the aggregate
of knowledge, skills, and values that we teach are invariably directed towards
helping youth to be successful at endeavors such as school, sports, the arts,
music, and other activities that require hours of dedicated study and practice.
Those hours are often like the time delay of the marshmallow test in that youth
can opt for using such time in immediately gratifying activities such as
playing computer games, watching TV, or just hanging out with friends or
pursuing less immediately rewarding activities such as studying for an exam,
drilling on a sports skill, or playing monotonous scales on an musical instrument.
While we in the youth development world may not think of ourselves
as promoting capacities that foster the ability to delay gratification, when we
look at what we teach it becomes more evident that this is exactly what we are
doing. For example, in one way or another we teach the “growth mindset” which
is a way to think about ourselves as life long learners. In support of such, we
teach our youth how to set goals, deal with set-backs; persevere (show “grit”);
control emotions; focus attention; avoid distractions; minimize interpersonal
conflict; and build social support to reinforce one’s striving, especially
during periods of little overt progress or when experiencing high amounts of stress.
That some youth are better than others at controlling their
impulses and working on longer term goals is evident from decades of behavioral
research, and more recently, from studies that show differential activation in
brain centers that have been identified as “hot” areas (i.e., those associated
with impulse satisfaction) in the more primitive limbic system, and those
associated with “cold” areas in the more recently developed neo-cortex. While
Mischel writes about how and why these dueling systems developed over time, and
the nature-nurture debate about how individual heredity and early experiences
strengthen or weaken their manifestations, he also conveys that strategies can
be taught and learned to enhance the expression of “cold system” thoughts and
behaviors, when such will benefit an individual. In simplest terms, he explains
that those young children who were able to wait for the researcher to return to
the testing room, in order to get two marshmallows, rather than going for the
instantaneous single marshmallow reward, did not simply do so because they had
a superior “cold system”, but because they had crafted strategies to divert
their attention so that they did not dwell on the powerful sensations
associated with eating a marshmallow. Mischel writes:
Successful delayers created all sorts of ways
to distract themselves and to cool the conflict and stress they were
experiencing. They transformed the aversive waiting situation by inventing
imaginative, fun distractions that took the struggle out of willpower: they
composed little songs (“ This is such a pretty day, hooray”; “This is my home
in Redwood City”), made funny and grotesque faces, picked their noses, cleaned
their ear canals and toyed with what they discovered there, and created games
with their hands and feet, playing their toes as if they were piano keys. When
all other distractions were exhausted, some closed their eyes and tried to go
to sleep— like one little girl who finally dropped her head into her folded
arms on the table and fell into a deep slumber, her face inches from the signal
bell. While these tactics were a marvel to behold in preschoolers, they are
familiar to anyone who has ever been trapped in the front row at a boring
lecture[1].
The message from these initial studies, and those conducted
subsequently on impulse control, is that virtually anyone can create or be
taught strategies to frame situations in such a way as to decrease the impulse
to act immediately when more deliberate planning and thoughtful restraint will
serve to benefit them more.
An interesting side note, discussed by Mischel, of particular
interest to youth development programs that attempt to develop assets in
participants that have transferable value across contexts is that the capacity
to control “hot” areas is largely situation specific. Despite initial beliefs
that people possessed generalizable traits that manifested themselves
consistently across contexts, research and current events tells us that such
traits only represent a potential for behavior. Current conditions, and
environments can play an overpowering role in how one behaves, despite inherent
dispositions. As Mischel conveys, well know persons such as former president
Bill Clinton, or golfer Tiger Woods had an incredible ability to forgo
immediate gratification (highly controlled individuals we might have thought) in
pursuit of their core goals (i.e., political or sport success), but when it
came to other aspects of their life, were unable or unwilling to invoke the
same deliberate control and discipline, which ultimately got them into trouble.
The message here, for those of us attempting to help youth develop
assets that are deployable across contexts, is to be deliberate about teaching
for transfer. In Mischel’s way of thinking, he suggests that individual’s must
not only possess capabilities, but understand how to deploy them. A large part
of this entails thinking in terms of “If”…”then” in that “if” a certain
situation arises, and I have a tendency to behave rashly or without forethought
(i.e., the “hot” system predominates), and this results in less than optimal
outcomes, as may be expected, “then” I need to step back and draw on those
assets I possess, perhaps deployed in other contexts, and exert control (i.e.,
invoke the “cold” system) so that my behavior helps me to achieve what I want,
or, at least does not derail me from achieving what I wish to achieve. In a
sense this is what cognitive behaviorists allude to as “inoculation training”,
which entails helping individuals make decisions and prepare for situations
that they may subsequently encounter so that they perform optimally in the heat
of the moment, rather than being usurped by their “hot”, impulsive, systems.
[1] Mischel, Walter (2014-09-23). The
Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control (Kindle Locations 328-334). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
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