Don't Eat the Marshmellow Yet!

You tell someone not to do something, they're only going to want to do it more, right? Well this experiment Joachim de Posada talks about in this video, http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html, only supports that statement more. When you put a marshmallow in front of a kid and tell him/her not to eat it until you get back, you're most likely never going to see that marshmallow again. So why is that? What's the difference between the kids that eat the marshmallow and the kids that don't? I thought about this for a while and reached a conclusion. Maybe it's as simple as the fact that they're children and they don't have a whole lot of self-discipline. Or maybe it's deeper, more internal. How they were raised could play a factor; maybe they were spoiled and always got everything they wanted when they wanted it. It could also depend on the age of the child. Nature vs. nurture comes into play as well. If the experiment were conducted in a completely different fashion, what would the results be like?

On the other hand, it could have nothing to do with the child what so ever. If they had the kids wait five minutes instead of fifteen for the marshmallow, their results might've been a little different. Another object or food could have drastically affected the outcome as well. What if the reward was a brussel sprout? Or a carrot? What I thought was most interesting about the entire experiment though was the fact that the third of the kids who didn't eat the marshmallow attended and graduated college and the two-thirds that ate it turned out to be not as successful. How could something as little as a marshmallow temptation when you're in elementary school determine whether or not you'll be successful when you're in your thirties? I can't help but wonder if I was to participate in that experiment at that age, would I have had enough self-discipline to hold back or would I have eaten it like the two-thirds of the children from this experiment? Would my life choices still have been the same? I might not have even attended this university and taken this class. Funny how things work out.