Can Delaying Gratification indicate future success?

I am sharing what I wrote for CONTACT, a magazine of Goan Chaplaincy UK (December 2022 issue). 

Researchers suggest that one ingredient for future success in life is based on delayed gratification in a given moment to receive a future reward. It is known as the marshmallow test to measure a child’s ability to delay gratification. The child is given the option to wait a bit longer to get two marshmallows or receive one without any wait time. Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University, led the famous marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification in 1972.

The researchers followed each child for more than 40 years, and the group who waited patiently for the second marshmallow succeeded in most areas of life. The experiments proved that delaying gratification was critical for success in life.

Can you hold on to receive a bigger reward? The vital lesson the Marshmallow test offered was perhaps that “willpower” is not an inborn trait. Children who couldn’t wait and ate the marshmallow right away were yet to learn the skill other children used to gain more than one marshmallow. Once they learned the skill, they got better at delaying gratification.

How long should you delay gratification? It depends on your current ability to perform delayed gratification. For example, if you struggle to wait for one week for a reward, start with one day. Over time, you will build a habit in your life.

You can call it self-regulation or self-control. It is an act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future. Secretly, we all aspire to curb food indulgences, shopping impulses and other addictive vices.

The children who tended to delay gratification were linked to long-term positive outcomes, including higher intelligence, social responsibility, social competence and improved academic performance. When you try such methods on your children, you may offer them an opportunity to practice delayed gratification and thus increasing their chances for positive outcomes. But read the last paragraph to interpret your results correctly.

Why is delayed gratification so hard? The challenge to delayed gratification is the uncertainty of future rewards. Real-life events are not always predictable. It is folly to think that the experiment will work in all situations.

Over the years, researchers have replicated the experiment, some even casting doubt about the results of the marshmallow experiment. The capacity to delay gratification can be shaped by the child’s social and economic background – it may be easier for an affluent child to delay gratification than a poor kid on the street. Delayed gratification is not always about willpower. When adults appear unreliable – or downright untrustworthy – kids choose instant rewards over future benefits.

Smart kids can also make impulsive choices. Children, responding to cues around them and thereby choosing smartly, are not necessarily lacking in willpower. Some kids learn the hard way. The adults they know don’t keep promises, and the world does not enforce fairness. When they get something nice, kids know that somebody bigger may come along and take it away. Children in unpredictable conditions may opt to dump delayed gratification.

About the Author

Feroz Fernandes, a Catholic Missionary, identifies himself as an Uncommon Priest. Father Feroz loves adventure in the apostolate. Check out his debut book The Uncommon Priest: Incredible Stories You Never Read on amazon. And also, the YouTube Channel: Feroz Fernandes promotes a better understanding of scripture.