Luke's Cookie Test

A while back I listened to a Radiolab podcast about the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.  It's a test of delayed gratification, where a child is put at a table with a single marshmallow on it, and told that they can have 2 marshmallows... but only if they can sit at the table without eating the marshmallow sitting right in front of their face.  The original Stanford experiment then followed the kids for years afterwards looking for a correlation between the ability to delay gratification and their success later in life.  It also turned out that age was a big factor, and the age of 4 was the sweet spot where the kids can start to weigh the whole 1 now versus 2 later decision.

Hmmmmm.  I have a 4 year old.  Could be entertaining.  And my guess is he is pretty likely to be able to wait, therefore boosting my confidence that he will turn out ok, instead of setting me up for 20 years of worry because he only lasted 14 seconds before scarfing down the marshmallow, therefore destining himself to a life of crime...

Unfortunately for the entertainment value of this blog, but very fortunately for Luke's future life prospects, he pretty easily made it 15 minutes and got the reward.  This bodes well for him, since all the participants of the original study who easily waited 15 minutes went on to become President of the United States (no, not really.)

For more entertainment value, just search for "Stanford Marshmallow Experiment" in youtube.  I am clearly not the only other parent who is willing to experiment on their own kid for entertainment.

Kind of makes me wish I had done this will all the kids when they were 4.  Then again... maybe not.