The Marshmallow Experiment By Walter Mischel

Does willpower affect your future as a growing child? Walter Mischel first conducted an experiment to see if it did in 1968. The experiment was called was the Marshmallow Experiment. What the experiment did was Mischel invited a four year old into a small room. He then made the child an offer. He or she can either eat one marshmallow right away or wait fifteen minutes to have two marshmallows. Mischel also told the kids that if they rang the bell before the whole fifteen minutes is up, he would come back running and the child will be able to eat one marshmallow but gave up the chance to have two.

Most children decided to try and wait fifteen minutes to be able to get the second marshmallow. While they tried waiting, a vast majority of the four year olds struggled to resist the allure of the one marshmallow. The average waiting time was less than two minutes. Some children spontaneously thought of different mental strategies to extend their

He would do the same thing like the first experiment. He would have the child sit down at a table and place a marshmallow in front of them. He would then tell them the offer that if they waited fifteen minutes, the child would get a second marshmallow but of he or she didn’t, they would not get the second marshmallow. But what was different about this experiment was that they would encounter with an adult about art supplies, one would be unreliable which they would never bring the art supplies, and the other would reliable meaning he would bring the art supplies. The earlier encounter had a huge influence on the children's willingness to wait for the second marshmallow. Only one out of fourteen children in the unreliable condition held out for the full fifteen minutes. They must have assumed that the second marshmallow, just like the art supplies was a lie. More than half of the children who had a reliable encounter made it through the whole fifteen