This blog post is in response to a recent New Yorker article, “Don’t,” from the May 18, 2009 issue. For those unfamiliar with the article, it can be found here. For those too busy to indulge in a full-length New Yorker feature, I have provided the following brief summary.
Summary
The article begins by revisiting a famous psychological study from the late 1960s in which toddlers were asked to make a difficult choice. Presented with a luscious marshmallow, these four and five year-olds were told they could each eat the marshmallow before them, or they could wait and receive a plate of marshmallows later. When confronted with such immediate temptation, most children exhibit poor will power and capitulate within three minutes. The article then continues to recount the subsequent test scores and overall success that the original subjects achieved as they grew up.
The children were roughly divided into two groups, “high and low delayers.” In general, low delayers tended to struggle academically whereas those “who could wait fifteen minutes had an SAT score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.”
As an education enthusiast, I do not find this correlation very surprising. Students with more discipline do more homework and get high grades – clearly we do not need science to prove such an academic tenet. This article did, however, encourage thoughts of mass media, tutoring, and the teenage psyche on which I am glad to elaborate.
No Pain, No Gain
With commercials for products such as Lays Potato Chips, Tootsie Pops, and other fast/junk food, we are constantly encouraged to succumb to temptation and embrace hedonic behavior – all within the span of a 30-second TV spot. Combining the accelleration of daily life with the ever-shrinking attention span, it is no surprise that test scores are declining and tutoring is increasing among teenagers.
[Before going forward, I would like to lobby for similar delayed gratification experiments, such as one variation that asked subjects to memorize a series of numbers during the decision-making process. As found here: "Shiv and Fedorikhin (2002) found that consumers who were placed under a cognitive load were more likely to choose a hedonic product (e.g., chocolate cake) over a utilitarian product (e.g., a healthy fruit salad)." I wonder how results would vary depending on age, cognitive development, hormone levels, and the ebb and flow of the academic calendar.]
Getting back to the mental atrophy associated with excessive exposure to contemporary media, it is easy to compare the role of tutor with that of a personal trainer. Although anyone is capable of exercising alone, the guidance from (and accountability to) someone else can vastly improve results. In short, people tend to prefer outsourcing their conscience – a real voice being harder to ignore than an internal monologue. Of course, many successful trainers and tutors help their clients internalize a voice of reason; some clients nonetheless remain dependent on external sources of moderation.
Although the marshmallow study was more concerned with innate rather than learned ability to delay gratification, I think valuable results could be derived by studying the effectiveness of techniques for inspiring autonomous discipline among youngsters.
All work and no play
I have a hunch that fear of punishment, for example, is a more effective marshmallow-eating deterrent than promise of future bounty. Hence the argument for highly structured academic environments, such as military schools. This line of reasoning, however, leads to a very troubling conclusion. If the delay of gratification engenders success, then the most successful people should tend to be the least happy. Although this logical conclusion is unsettling, it is also untrue. Rather, the most successful people are not those who perpetually delay gratification but instead those who derive fulfillment and satisfaction from their work.
As such, the very best trainers and teachers are those who inspire passion, enthusiasm, and internal motivation with positive rather than negative reinforcement. This is done with exploration of process as well as goals with constant attention to long and short term progress. Most importantly, there is no subsitute for a good student-teacher relationship founded on respect and mutual understanding.
So, the next time you eat a marshmallow, don’t just enjoy every bite; think of how its potential physical and psychological energy can be converted into personal success – not measured by GPA or income but your own internal wellbeing.
