Many folx are no doubt familiar with the now famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. This was a 1972 experiment on delayed gratification led my psychologist Walter Mischel. In the study, children were presented with a choice between one small immediate reward (a single marshmallow) or the promise of two small rewards (two marshmallows) if they agreed to wait for a period of time. The researcher would leave the child in the room alone for approximately 15 minutes and then return to see how they had behaved. Following the experiment, the researchers continued to track the children longitudinally and found better life outcomes (SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index, etc.) for those children that were able to delay gratification.
New research, including a study Mischel himself helped established, has since thrown 30 years of belief into question, however. The more recent research casts doubt on measures of delayed gratification as accurate predictors of better life outcomes. Instead, the newer research suggests that a child's social and economic background is a much better predictor of their ability to delay gratification. Children who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to eat the marshmallow and less likely to wait. Not surprisingly, those social and economic characteristics are far more predictive of overall life outcomes and wellbeing as well.
Although the original experiments have since been effectively refuted, the topic of delayed gratification can be informative as it relates to our understanding of student decision-making and ultimately student success. In many ways, a college education is an exercise in delayed gratification. You are buying in to the belief that 4 or 5 years of hard work will eventually lead to better life outcomes in the form of economic independence and overall happiness. You are thus willing to trade what may seem like short-term happiness (finally being "done" with school) for long-term gains. In the interim, you may view your coursework as simply a means to an end. This feeling is exacerbated by skyrocketing tuition costs and the reality of out-of-control student loan debt.
The compromise inherent in this delayed gratification is often the choice of a degree program that a student is not necessarily as interested in, but is more certain will result in greater economic security and mobility. For many students, this commitment lasts several years before they mature further and recognize where their true passions reside, and end up switching majors (often multiple times). This choice often leads to increased debt and delayed graduation. These patterns would suggest that our continued insistence that students choose a major early on in their college experience are inadvertently harming students. Might we consider simply delaying that request until later in an individual's college career? They may still end up selecting the same major they were initially inclined to pursue, but they would have much more data and experience upon which to base their decision.
The research refuting the original marshmallow test ultimately suggests that economic wellbeing largely predicts behavior during the experience, just as economic conditions at birth heavily influence eventual social and economic wellbeing. In other words, if you come from a privileged background, then you are more likely to delay gratification because your lived experience is one in which your needs are almost always met and you can depend on resources being available in the future.
Thus, the economic conditions students enter higher education in may very well have a significant impact not only on their retention and eventual graduation rates, but the choices they make about what to study. Traditional financial aid packages often do not cover all necessary expenses for students and leave them to make up the difference through part time (or often full time) work. Not surprisingly, this leaves less time for intellectual exploration as a sense of urgency is created. The sooner you graduate, the sooner you change your circumstances. We need to be thinking about financial aid more holistically and considering how best to support students so that they can be free to pursue a wider variety of intellectual pursuits. Instead, we are simply cutting humanities and liberal arts departments and majors at an alarming rate.
The marshmallow experiment itself may not be the far-reaching predictor of success it was initially thought to be, but the role of delayed gratification still has significance as we consider how best to foster student success. We are ultimately striving to create conditions by which more students are comfortable delaying gratification because they are confident in the opportunities and resources that await them in the future. Lowering these barriers will create more cognitive surplus among a more diverse student population and ultimately lead to more diverse and creative ideas.
