[HN Gopher] The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult...
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The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning
Author : superposeur
Score : 350 points
Date : 2024-08-02 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)
| superposeur wrote:
| Thank god, as I love marshmallows and instant gratification.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I submit to you that marshmallows are incompatible with instant
| gratification, because they're only good when you slowly toast
| them over a fire until browned on all sides. Cold marshmallows
| (or marshmallows shoved in the fire and then blown out) are
| just sad and not worth the calories.
| atonse wrote:
| If you added that (offer them marshmallows and a way to toast
| them), all you've done with that test is identify the foodies
| :-) (I 100% agree with you about them being toasted)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| They are also good baked with cereal to produce a sweet bar.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Touche. That is a good use for them as well.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| They only measured the subjects' "adult" life outcomes at age 26.
| Perhaps the researchers were rushing to publish and unwilling to
| wait long enough for the effect to replicate.
| Veen wrote:
| Or perhaps there is no effect.
| error_logic wrote:
| Or perhaps economic mobility has stagnated and external
| factors dominate.
| wonnage wrote:
| fixing the structural problems in the economy is so boring,
| let's blame the marshmallows
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Maybe when they grow up some of them learned to steer away from
| instant gratification. Or maybe you need to account for how big
| luck is in the success in life
| influx wrote:
| Have any famous psychological tests replicated?
| dommer wrote:
| https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/ten-famous-psychology...
|
| Tricky subject by all accounts
| acover wrote:
| .
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| You can't answer "Have any famous tests replicated?" with
| "out of 100 studies from the year 2008, 36% replicated"
| unless one of those studies was actually famous.
| exe34 wrote:
| > You can't answer
|
| Only if you're a frequentist. A Bayesian would see evidence
| that studies in general fail to replicate, and thus have a
| better prior for famous ones than 50:50.
| layer8 wrote:
| As an aside, such lines of argument regarding credence
| are not in any way incompatible with frequentism. Few
| frequentists deny the correctness of Bayes' theorem.
| acover wrote:
| True, I'm not going to read through the list and decide if
| any of them are famous for him.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I am pretty sure the test of "will you publish nonsense as if
| it were true for fame or money" has been replicated multiple
| times in many different fields.
| layer8 wrote:
| The Asch conformity experiment seems to replicate:
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| As an aside, psychological experiments tend to become famous by
| being controversial, which in turn probably constitutes a bias
| against replicatability. There might be a lot of boring
| psychological experiments with unsurprising results that
| replicate without issue.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The Bystander Apathy Experiment has been replicated numerous
| times as has the Milgram experiment.
| vvpan wrote:
| Yet another study that "explains it" turns out to be false. Good.
| error_logic wrote:
| Failure to replicate could happen for any number of reasons.
| The sample populations might not enjoy marshmallows the same
| way!
|
| But, yes, good to be aware of the possibility of both false
| positives and false negatives.
| vvpan wrote:
| In general the original study felt like a more widely
| accepted Myers-Briggs of sorts. But as always happens with
| people and personality related theories the reality is either
| "more complicated" at best or the theory is outright false.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed
| promising turned out to be false. The goal is to have
| explanations of the world, after all. It's better to have
| learned that something is false than to go on believing the
| falsehood, but better still is to have something true which
| explains things.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > don't think that it's a good thing if a study which seemed
| promising turned out to be false.
|
| It is definitely a good thing.
|
| It is good that the conclusions of a study that was
| demonstrated to be unsound have been replaced by those of a
| better study. If some even better study comes along later and
| replaces this one, that'll be good too. We now know more.
| It's not fun or convenient, but is generally aligned with the
| direction science should go.
|
| If people who've made decisions based on their understanding
| of the results of this study, it's good that they'll no
| longer labor under a delusion, and can potentially make
| better decisions.
|
| Good in the sense that hard things which make us
| incrementally better are good.
| jti107 wrote:
| anedotally this has held up in my social group. the people that i
| grew up with and went to school with...the ones that could delay
| instant gratification and had long term goals ended up doing
| pretty well in life. the ones that didnt have any plans and just
| went with the flow did poorly and just getting by.
|
| also in my life i notice a big difference in performance from
| when i had goals/vision for my life vs. going through the
| motions.
|
| IMO i think you need to have goals/vision/standards for all the
| important areas in your life
| (hobbies,partner,career,family,relationships)
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Could go either way in my social group. Some folks hit ivy and
| then ended up at mediocre tech jobs anyway, others hit ivy and
| struggling to find work. Others went with the flow and still
| made it to the same mediocre tech jobs. And the ones who failed
| through school and barely made it through community college
| have successful small businesses because they were charting
| their own path the whole time.
| charlie0 wrote:
| > And the ones who failed through school and barely made it
| through community college have successful small businesses
| because they were charting their own path the whole time.
|
| By definition, it sounds like these folk were able to delay
| gratification quite well.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Maybe it depends on how you look at it? If gratification is
| "working on my side project instead of finishing homework
| due tomorrow" then it wasn't delayed much, they were
| gratified the whole dang time!
| kenjackson wrote:
| But what were they doing when they failed school? I feel like
| there are the Bill Gates, skipping school kids. And the ones
| I went to school with who just smoked, drank and hung out at
| the park.
|
| I suspect the outcomes were fairly different although might
| both fit under your same category.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Bill Gates, skipping school kids
|
| Bill Gates could drop out of college and skip school
| because he had wealthy family that would have supported him
| if things went poorly. Poor people do not have that option,
| so when they skip school, they instead get labeled truants
| and harassed by the state.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| IMO you do not. I know many people "doing pretty well in life"
| who are opportunistic rather than goal-driven, and having goals
| for your partner/family/relationships sounds to me like a
| recipe for disaster
| im3w1l wrote:
| In regards to the first part of your post, being
| opportunistic and goal-driven are not necessarily opposites.
| A person who is both has a plan that they follow by default,
| but the flexibility to turn on a dime if a better choice
| opens up.
|
| The second part I partially agree with. But establishing a
| routine like meeting some friend every Thursday evening, that
| can be good.
| fragmede wrote:
| lets have kids and raise them well is a pretty common shared
| goal for parents/family
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That this personality trait, if it exists, is important for
| success is pretty obviously true.
|
| If you can measure this trait by putting marshmallows in front
| of 41/2 olds is a whole other question.
| abeppu wrote:
| ... and I guess another question is, how stable is this
| trait?
|
| E.g. if we got really used to telling 12 year olds that the
| marshmallow test finding indicates that the ability to put of
| immediate rewards for larger later rewards is _really
| important_ , could you effectively get (slightly older) kids
| to learn to delay gratification more, such that their
| performance as small children matters less?
|
| Or (more likely) if you raise a generation with more
| distracting technology, can you destroy a whole generation's
| ability to patiently wait for a larger reward?
| fragmede wrote:
| let's ask China
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Many years ago, I recall reading in _Columbia History of the
| World_ that the ability to live in cities, that is
| civilization, began when people preserved their seed corn so
| that they could have multiple harvests during the growing
| seasons.
|
| What I remember is that they summarize this as "Delayed
| gratification is the root of civilization."
|
| And while this is pretty early in the history of the world
| book, I read no further because I doubted I would find anything
| more insightful in the subsequent hundreds of pages.
|
| ...
|
| Years later I tried to find that quote and I could not. I still
| believe it is a valuable insight though even if I hallucinated
| it.
| digging wrote:
| Why don't squirrels live in cities then?
| fragmede wrote:
| they do, along with a large number of rats and other vermin
| digging wrote:
| Did you perform the marshmallow test on your friend as
| children? If not, I don't even know if you're really talking
| about the same thing, to be honest. The original study is such
| a weird and specific phenomenon to which a heroic effort of
| extrapolation was applied.
|
| "Doing well in life," "delaying gratification," and "long-term
| goals" are about as far from concretely measurable traits as
| you can get.
|
| What about a person who always waits to buy games on sale, but
| has experienced food insecurity and won't pass on free food,
| even if it's unhealthy? I could go on... there are countless
| variables when trying to evaluate those traits. What this study
| is saying is that extrapolating such broad strokes from small
| indicators is probably not a smart move.
| sdwr wrote:
| Life can be a lot like a hologram, where the little things
| show the whole picture.
|
| The marshmallow test is not really testing hunger or self
| control. It tests how willing people are to align with
| authority/the bigger picture.
|
| The ideal participant isn't someone doing the calculus that 2
| > 1. It's someone who recognizes that they are being tested,
| and cares about that more than any number of marshmallows.
|
| The question isn't "how hungry am I?", but "what does adult
| attention mean to me?".
|
| And that's why all of this stuff will stop replicating
| eventually, why new psychotherapies revert to the mean - it
| doesn't have the same amount of meaning for the test-givers
| after decades of trials.
| digging wrote:
| > The marshmallow test is not really testing hunger or self
| control. It tests how willing people are to align with
| authority/the bigger picture.
|
| I feel you're making the exact same mistake as the original
| researchers.
|
| The marshmallow test is a proxy, but it's impossible to say
| what it's a proxy _for_ in any given individual. One kid
| will wait because they 're scared the researcher will be
| angry if they don't. Another kid will wait because they
| recently learned what marshmallows are, and they actually
| really want to eat two. A third will not wait, because
| they've never seen a marshmallow before and would rather
| try one first before getting two.
| lolinder wrote:
| Agreed. For me the real question isn't whether being capable of
| delaying instant gratification leads to better outcomes, it's
| if the marshmallow test accurately measures susceptibility to
| pursuing instant gratification in the cases that matter.
|
| Like, I've never liked marshmallows. A second marshmallow would
| have been uninteresting to me. And even if it were I could
| totally see a kid going "eh, it's just a marshmallow, I'm going
| to just eat it now and then go think about something else".
|
| Being able to delay instant gratification for greater rewards
| is only valuable in cases where you actually care about the
| reward. Someone who applies it everywhere regardless of
| interest level is just min-maxing life, and it wouldn't
| surprise me if obsessively min-maxing even little details
| doesn't correlate with better outcomes.
| wonnage wrote:
| the confirmation bias is biasing
| nerdponx wrote:
| That's why these bunk psychology studies are so insidious. It
| might in fact be a real effect! But maybe not at the level of
| babies and marshmallows.
| jpwagner wrote:
| Think of the marshmallow test as a short story by a famous
| author. It rings with truth, but it's not "science".
| nineplay wrote:
| I was talking about this a few weeks ago and realized I would eat
| the damn marshmallow. Researchers do not act in good faith. Maybe
| they're testing me for delayed gratification. Maybe they're
| measuring my anxiety levels as I wait for someone to come back
| with a promised reward. Maybe they want to know how angry I'd get
| if they come back and said they were out of marshmallows - or
| come back and flat out ate the marshmallow in front of me. A lot
| of researchers would happily trick me into thinking I was killing
| someone if they thought they could get away with it.
|
| Its the truth that demolishes all the hand-waving about the
| marshmallow test - it relies on the subject's trust of the person
| running the experiment. I wouldn't trust them, why should anyone
| else?
|
| When evaluated that way - particularly when testing on children -
| the outcome is painfully predictable.
|
| - Children who have adults in life that they trust have better
| outcomes.
|
| - Children who do not have adults in their lives who they trust
| have worse outcomes.
| RRWagner wrote:
| I was a subject in a college psychology experiment when I was
| an undergrad. The researcher said I would get some amount of $
| for each new word in a sequence that I could correctly remember
| and repeat without error. I mentally made up a story and added
| each new word to the story. At the end they said that I
| remembered too many words, more than they had ever anticipated,
| it was too much $ for them to pay and gave me $5. Later I
| wondered whether the real experiment was about reacting to
| being tricked.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Just remember that the reason why Ted Kazinsky said he bombed
| the federal government was because he was subjected to MK
| Ultra experiments in college.
|
| I'd say you got a good deal getting two dollars instead of
| life long trauma.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This has been theorized by his brother and others, but I'm
| not sure he ever claimed that. He wrote a _lot_ of words in
| a pretty famous document as to why he bombed his targets,
| none of which were federal government targets.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| Ted Kaczynski didn't bomb the federal government though.
|
| I'd also be curious about a citation for his motivation
| being the MK Ultra experiments, it's news to me that he
| ever explicitly called those as a motive.
| rolph wrote:
| i think verbal contract law would apply here.
| error_logic wrote:
| Having been in the former camp to such a heavy degree, I
| wouldn't have even thought of this dimension as a confounding
| variable, despite always trying to see that sort of thing.
|
| Thank you for the insight.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Indeed, I couldn't really participate in psychology research
| because there is almost always an element of deception and I
| couldn't help but look for it.
|
| One extreme example arguably created the Unabomber.[0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Psychological_st
| ...
| rolph wrote:
| when marshmallow tested, i spit on my marshmallow, when asked why
| i explained "now noone will want that one", "now i get two
| marshmallows because i waited" , "and also a third one cause only
| i will want it"
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Found this article whilst looking for more details, the same
| results seem to have been reported for several years, including
| following the subjects into middle age:
|
| https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmal...
|
| > As the researchers predicted, the study finds only a tiny
| correlation between marshmallow test times and midlife capital
| formation. A graduate's score on the self-regulation index was,
| however, modestly predictive of their middle-age capital
| formation, the study finds.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I've always suspected the marshmallow test measures desire to
| please the researcher more than anything else.
|
| I'm supposed to sit here and stare at this marshmallow for some
| indeterminate amount of time, just to get _one_ more marshmallow?
| Offer me a whole bag and we 'll talk. Otherwise, you're wasting
| my time. My marshmallow would be gone before they could finish
| explaining the task.
| llm_trw wrote:
| I've eaten a bag of marshmallows today while coding till 4am on
| a Friday night.
|
| Your proxy tests for self control have no power here.
| fragmede wrote:
| My parents bringing me in, saying researcher is from a big name
| university and is very smart and do what he says, is going to
| have a much different effect on me than my step dad coming late
| to pick me up because my mom dumped me on his lap last minute
| because she has a new boyfriend and doesn't have time for me
| now and also my step dad says university is stupid and for
| geeks and don't believe a word the stupid college girl tells me
| to, is going to have a biasing effect on the kid!
| charlie0 wrote:
| Maybe tempting children with marshmallows is a bad proxy for
| testing delayed gratification, but the thesis about being able to
| delay gratification leading to success seems to be true as far as
| I can tell. Anecdotally, all the people I know who can't delay
| gratification are just scraping by (this includes another SWE who
| earns a decent amount but is rather impulsive). All those I know
| who can delay it are doing great.
| veggieroll wrote:
| I don't like marshmellows.
| rolph wrote:
| Zira : Because I loathe bananas!
|
| https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=G3Phb8AyrxE
| jmugan wrote:
| It's funny. When you first do work, you want the experiment to
| satisfy your hypothesis. When you are building on work, you also
| want the replication to succeed. But when it is a famous result
| like this, you actually want it to fail so people talk about your
| result. There are uncountable ways that these experiments can be
| unconsciously and subtly affected by the desire of the
| experimenter.
|
| As an aside, I believe one interesting confounder in the
| marshmallow test is that it tests more (or at least as much) the
| subject's trust that the eventual reward will actually be given
| as it does the subject's ability to wait for the reward. So if
| you live in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just eat
| it.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I recall that your confounder was used as an explanation to
| wave away the air reproducibility of the marshmallow test, but
| I do not recall anyone actually ever testing that.
|
| This recent article seems to indicate that it's all just horse
| feathers and so you can make up any confounder you want to
| explain it away...
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| As someone who lived in "unpredictable environment " in the 90s
| in Russia the correct statement would be: So if you live in an
| unpredictable environment, it's better to just move to a
| predictable environment.
|
| I saw a lot more people saving for the future rather than
| spending it all, which I surprisingly found the other way
| around in Canada, which is a predictable environment.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| > As someone who lived in "unpredictable environment " in the
| 90s in Russia the correct statement would be: So if you live
| in an unpredictable environment, it's better to just move to
| a predictable environment.
|
| I think _everyone_ would take that opportunity if it was
| presented. Or at least most people.
| jkolio wrote:
| Your environment was predictable, in that savings up enough
| would likely give you the option to move out. There are
| places where saving up enough money to leave your
| unpredictable environment unpredictably ends with you drowned
| in the Mediterranean, or in limbo short of your intended
| destination, or shipped back to where you spent so long
| trying to leave, in addition to the "success" case.
| kromem wrote:
| Definitely happens from time to time.
|
| When I took a look at a frequently cited paper 'disproving'
| Dunning-Kreuger, I was surprised by just how god awful the
| methodology actually was:
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Tqm8Jet9mzo6buj9/the-dunnin...
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >But when it is a famous result like this, you actually want it
| to fail so people talk about your result.
|
| There are finite resources for replication and so those
| resources must be allocated. High-profile results tend to
| attract good and skeptical replication attempts. This has
| always seemed like a pretty good approach to me. But
| replication takes time, and some people think it's a
| catastrophe that "bad" results don't immediately get corrected.
| luketheobscure wrote:
| An alternative interpretation of the Marshmallow Test is that it
| is a measurement of trust as much as it is of self control. If
| you don't believe that the researchers are going to give you the
| two marshmallows, then you're not going to wait.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Or, that it's complete nonsense with no predictability
| whatsoever so you can make of it what you want
| chairhairair wrote:
| I suspect (or hope) that many professional psychologists are
| beginning to doubt that data acquired in these contrived
| laboratory settings can provide a window into actual human
| behavior at all.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Could be completely random how the kid feels that day and how
| much they like marshmallows in the first place.
| layer8 wrote:
| And low trust in researchers would explain low incentive for
| academic achievements. ;)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Seems like this needs repeated test. Where for a few first
| rounds there is no reward for later...
| smegger001 wrote:
| or a second marshmallow isn't all that appealing. if offer one
| now or two later i might pick one now because i don't want two.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The findings of the original study were called into question by a
| larger 2018 study[0]. The original study had 90 students. Some
| folks did a study with 900 people. They found the same
| correlation that the original study did. But when they controlled
| for household income, they found most of the correlation
| disappeared.
|
| The obvious conclusion is that household income is a predictor of
| both:
|
| - inability to delay gratification, and
|
| - higher academic achievement
|
| This makes sense when you consider that someone growing up in a
| poor household may have both:
|
| - less reliable/continuous/predictable access to material things,
| meaning they would rationally seize immediate opportunities
| rather than taking the risk of a larger future opportunity, and
|
| - less academic support
|
| Now, this new study (OP) goes even further, finding that the
| correlation itself is weak.
|
| [0] Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting
| the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating
| Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes.
| Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159-1177.
| https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661
| biofox wrote:
| Psychology is messy. If you assume that impulse control and the
| ability to delay gratification is an inherited trait, then the
| income of parents becomes supporting evidence rather than a
| confounder.
|
| Time to do some GWAS to see if there is indeed a genetic
| component :)
| narag wrote:
| Maybe the only possible conclusion is that you need much more
| specific experiments to conclude anything useful.
|
| I believe that _any_ experiment that involves the whole life
| of someone is doomed and useless.
| Guvante wrote:
| Why do people make up inherited traits and apply them as if
| that is a legitimate critique?
|
| The entire reason they did the marshmallow study is because
| most studies on impulse control cannot avoid confounding
| factors.
|
| Time value money matters if I am offering you money now vs
| later. E.g. if you are in debt money later effectively
| involves the interest earned on that money at likely 25% or
| worst case 900%. If you aren't in debt the alternative is
| investing at 7% with risk or 2-5% without risk.
|
| Trust is incredibly important. Money now is money now, money
| later might be money later if they actually fulfill the
| promise. And this isn't income agnostic as the risk of this
| varies wildly based on the impact of the money. A "get back
| on your feet" amount of money today or a slightly larger
| amount in a year implies a lot more risk than some spending
| money on either case.
|
| Additionally while genetic markers have sometimes been
| effective at predicting even those have trouble with the
| random nature of gene transference.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| All psychological traits are highly heritable. See eg
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739500/
| toolz wrote:
| All traits, psychological or otherwise are heritable. The
| hard question to answer is how predictive those inherited
| genetics are relative to other factors.
| pineaux wrote:
| Yes, but tiny variations in phenotype will foster rather
| largely different outcomes. People forget that a lot of
| your genetic traits are there as potential, but not as
| fact. Its not even necessarily and upbringing thing.
| Epigenetica systems, multi generation genetic markings
| (like famine). Its very hard to say how a certain genetic
| trait becomes an observed psychological trait.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| > Time to do some GWAS to see if there is indeed a genetic
| component :)
|
| Um, what exactly are you trying to say?
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| Seems like they're trying to say their could be a genetic
| component and a GWAS would help determine if that's true
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Right, but I think in this case people mostly about whether
| there's causation. Because, if there is, then you can do an
| intervention to train willpower.
| Squeeeez wrote:
| The obvious conclusion is not that obvious. You can have
| genetic traits which affect self-control, for example.
| planb wrote:
| It doesn't even have to be genetic. Parents which are able to
| raise their children to be functioning adults probably were
| raised by functioning adults and were able to find a job that
| leads to higher household income. We're talking about
| statistics here, so outliers are not relevant. Unfortunately
| this often prevents lots of meaningful discussions, because
| that would imply that a) it's not just ,,you need to work
| hard to be successful" (which one side of the political
| spectrum does not like to hear) and b) where and how you grew
| up is very predictive of how capable you are (which the other
| side does not like to hear).
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| In regards to a and b, wouldn't someone who thinks the
| former likely be someone who also thinks the latter? Those
| don't seem contradictory and, indeed, one is a possible
| explanation of the other.
| frogpelt wrote:
| I think in general, those divisions do exist.
|
| People who lean right, tend to think movement from lower
| classes to higher classes is possible with hard work and
| that a person's starting point doesn't matter as much.
|
| People who lean left tend to think where you start is the
| biggest predictor of where you will end up regardless of
| how hard you work. Hence the reasons one side favors the
| social safety net more than the other side does.
|
| That has been my observation at least.
| planb wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly as I see it - but as you can see in
| the downvotes many people very strongly think just one of
| these is true and very aggressively disagree with the
| other one.
| tristor wrote:
| That would be true if these issues were discussed in
| rational terms, but unfortunately because it's
| predominantly political, it means rational terms are not
| the basis of these discussions. That is presupposing
| either point A or B is even true.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Parents which are able to raise their children to be
| functioning adults probably were raised by functioning
| adults and were able to find a job that leads to higher
| household income. We're talking about statistics here,_
|
| What is a functioning adult, and where are those statistics
| from?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Start with a low bar. Since we are talking kids: married
| parents, employed.
|
| https://eadn-wc01-3158345.nxedge.io/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/...
| Yawrehto wrote:
| Why would marriage matter? Marriage may be an indicator
| of something, but there are plenty of successful single
| parents. I can think of several exceptions I know, all of
| whom are reasonably successful - one a somewhat well-
| known academic, one, last I checked, a rabbi somewhere,
| one, now deceased, a...actually, I forget what she did,
| but she managed to have a home in NYC and didn't come
| from a rich background, so she must've done something for
| a living (her kids were both academics.) When I can think
| of that many examples of reasonably successful people who
| break your rules without thinking too hard, there's
| probably something wrong with your theory, or at least my
| interpretation of it (sorry if I'm misreading what you
| wrote!)
| planb wrote:
| Maybe that was misleading. The statistics I'm talking
| about are from the article, and the sentence before was
| just my guess - but I really think this is common sense,
| isn't it?
| frogpelt wrote:
| I agree. There very clearly is a causation link between
| certain behaviors and long term success. Household income
| is something people have direct control over. I can go out
| and immediately cut mine in half tomorrow if I choose to.
| Doubling it would be harder but i imagine I could do that
| too if I took the appropriate actions.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Yes, and likely with environmental reinforcement. High
| income/high IQ -> self sorting, and assortative mating. That
| will lead to households with kids who have both genetic
| traits, and an environment that's going to teach and reward
| self control.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| people really don't want to accept that beyond the most
| extreme cases(starvation, lead poisoning, complete neglect,
| no school access at all, etc.), environment really doesn't
| play that big of a role. Twin studies have shown this for
| literally decades
| astrange wrote:
| Lead poisoning isn't an extreme case, it's a very common
| problem.
|
| Twin studies don't exclude environmental causes because
| twins have the same maternal environment.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| That's not true, for example metacognitive ability studies
| have shown environment plays the dominant role. Twin
| studies on trust provide the same, in which genetic
| component while large at 33% certainly doesn't indicate
| what you're stating that it's only "extreme cases". Even in
| studies re-assessing conventional twin studies and
| educational attainment, the conclusion was that while some
| is genetic (sometimes even a large portion) the
| correlations between a mother and father's educational
| attainment points to environment playing a large role
| (unless you have the belief that the mother and father are
| siblings I suppose).
|
| You'll be extremely hard pressed to find researchers
| conducting these twin studies who minimize the role of
| either genetic or environmental impact on certain aspects
| in the way you did.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| That's not what the twin studies have shown. It's not only
| the most extreme cases, it's anything short of the very
| good circumstances. For example, the stable homes families
| have to _prove_ they have to adopt.
|
| Cyril-f "twin". https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/no-one-
| expects-young-men-to-...
| fardinahsan wrote:
| Wut? The causation can flow the other way as well. Having high
| tike preference results in lower household income. And time
| preference is probably genetic. They literally controlled for
| the variable they were testing for....
| searealist wrote:
| Why is it instead not obvious that delayed gratification is a
| predictor of household income?
| michaelt wrote:
| How would a 4-year-old's ability to delay gratification
| increase their parents' income?
| hnthrowaway121 wrote:
| Perhaps if they inherited the ability from a parent, the
| parent is more likely to have an income as a result of
| investing in their education for example.
| advael wrote:
| I mean, maybe, but this is definitely doing causal
| modeling backwards
|
| Yes, it's possible that there are strong genetic
| predictors of household income, as a lot of people seem
| to want there to be for some reason, but when predicting
| the behavior of a child, their immediate circumstances
| are a much more parsimonious explanation for their
| behavior than some genetic factor strongly predicting
| both the circumstances and the behavior. I'm not saying
| that genetics being somewhat causally upstream of income
| is an inherently bad hypothesis, but this kind of
| correlation analysis doesn't support it as well as it
| does an environmental influence on time preference
| searealist wrote:
| This is the crux of the controversy. Some people think
| behaviors have 0% genetic inheritance and some people think
| it's >0%. To assume low income parents can only cause low
| future orientation, but not the reverse, you must be in the
| former camp.
| rvense wrote:
| Some people desperately want poverty to be due to
| individual moral failure, as opposed to a systemic
| failure.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Some people desperately want poverty to be due to
| individual moral failure, as opposed to a systemic
| failure_
|
| There are zealots on both sides. Brilliant people are
| poor because they were never given an opportunity while
| rich nincompoops accumulate aristocratic power. At the
| same time, plenty of people are poor because they can't
| make good decisions or have zero emotional self control
| while a few go from rags to riches. The problem is
| blended, and it shouldn't be beyond reproach to question
| whether some factors are heritable, whether genetically
| or through cultural transfer.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| But one of those opinions flows power from the many to
| the few while the other the opposite. It is in and of
| itself political.
|
| It of course shouldn't be beyond reproach to do the
| research but it seems reasonable to be more critical of
| research that implies some implicit reinforcement of the
| current power structures because that's what we'd get
| from bad research too.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _one of those opinions flows power from the many to the
| few while the other the opposite. It is in and of itself
| political_
|
| This is true of many things. That doesn't mean asking the
| question is tainted. Anyone using either hypothesis as
| the basis for policy is similarly flawed in my view.
|
| > _seems reasonable to be more critical of research that
| implies some implicit reinforcement of the current power
| structures_
|
| There are massive power structures that benefit from the
| promulgation of either hypothesis.
| sokoloff wrote:
| And some people are open to the possibility/probability
| that personal actions and choices have an influence over
| the propensity to experience poverty, in order to
| understand (and intervene where feasible) to break the
| observed cycle in a structural way.
| quotemstr wrote:
| The four-year-old's income predicts the four-year-old's low
| time preference.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Because we have no evidence of a genetic predictor for
| household income (or delayed gratification capacity). We _do_
| have evidence of class mobility.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| More simply: people who grow up hungry learn to eat whenever
| they can because being hungry is awful
|
| It doesn't even need to generalize. This is just a basic food
| security thing and is part of the reason why obesity is counter
| intuitively common among people who suffer from food
| insecurity.
| searealist wrote:
| Few grow up hungry in America. Certainly fewer than would
| influence this study.
| telgareith wrote:
| "Not even wrong"
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Cost of food has grown significantly just in the past year
| or two. In 2022 alone, there was a 45% increase in food
| insecurity in children of the USA. [0]
|
| 0. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2023/10/26/1208760...
| searealist wrote:
| Common sense says kids are not growing up hungry. If you
| look at actual times when they were, like the great
| depression, kids were rail thin. The opposite is true
| now. If you read the fine print on these reports they
| usually boil down to something like: "there is not enough
| variety in the household".
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You're being presented with literal statistics on food
| insecurity and ignoring what you're being told.
|
| Many people are both food insecure AND fat because food
| insecurity drives people to eat as much as they can
| because of the fear of being hungry later.
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's not really eat as much as you can, more eat low
| quality ultra processed foods that are high in empty
| calories and low in nutrients.
| borski wrote:
| It's actually both. It ends up being "eat as much as you
| can _of_ low quality ultra processed foods that are high
| in empty calories and low in nutrients," because _that is
| what is inexpensive_
| jncfhnb wrote:
| This statement is correct. Don't downvote it. It also
| compounds as calorically dense ultra processed foods lack
| the nutritional content make you stay full
| searealist wrote:
| The definition of food security was changed in 2006 to
| eliminate any reference to hunger.
|
| > Low food security--Households reduced the quality,
| variety, and desirability of their diets, but the
| quantity of food intake and normal eating patterns were
| not substantially disrupted. [1]
|
| In other words, by new definitions, if you ever reduce
| the quality, variety, or even desirability of your food
| throughout the year, you are considered food insecure.
|
| EDIT: It looks like I'm not allowed to post in this
| thread anymore. I am quoting the USDA website. Nothing is
| cherry-picked. I've added a citation.
|
| [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-
| assistance/fo...
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Decline in food quality is ostensibly a decline in food
| security. But any sensible design would not use that as a
| threshold for defining food security.
|
| Rather than appealing to some unnamed source's cherry
| picked definition, you would do better to look at an
| actual study of food security and see how it was defined.
| Because a very small amount of common sense suggests to
| me it's not what you're saying.
| arp242 wrote:
| You can be hungry and not rail thin. The notion that you
| need to be starving from malnutrition to be hungry is
| rather ridiculous.
|
| I was hungry as a child and teenager. This involved
| things such as not having any food prepared for school,
| and not having money to buy something myself. Yes, we had
| dinner, and no, I wasn't starving to death or rail thin.
| But I was also hungry.
| therealdkz wrote:
| source?
| IanCal wrote:
| Is that from the study or your interpretation? Being hungry
| is a lot more of a threshold thing than income.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're trying to claim. Poverty is
| obviously well correlated with food insecurity.
| adrianN wrote:
| That depends on the country. In rich countries it is rare
| for poor people to go hungry because food is cheap
| compared to median income and poverty is defined relative
| to median income.
| orwin wrote:
| Counterpoint: I've visited the US. Poor children go
| hungry there, at least in WV. I've talked with a teacher
| who baked white rice everyday to give it to 3 children in
| her class, since they couldn't afford the school's
| restaurant and didn't had lunch.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Every public school in the US has free school linches for
| those in extreme poverty. This is especially true in more
| poverty striken areas (like West Virginia):
|
| https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp
| zamfi wrote:
| Some of these programs require household application,
| which may be to high a barrier for some students.
|
| That teacher's support might be vital to a hungry 8yo
| whose parents can't/won't/don't fill out the form?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Call CPS if it's that bad
| mrguyorama wrote:
| "Extreme poverty" in the US is such a crazy low bar
| though. A huge portion of America is literally working
| poor. Not technically under any poverty bar, but that's
| not enough to pay rent and also buy enough food for
| everyone.
|
| For those people, the $2 a day that school lunch costs
| (or even 50 cents for reduced price lunch) is literally
| too much money, because it is. So those kids go hungry. I
| knew plenty of those kids that all of you are insisting
| don't exist (for some reason) and no, the existing
| welfare is just not enough, even in an extremely low cost
| of living area, in a state with significant state level
| aid.
| DataDive wrote:
| As far as I know schools provide free lunches to children
| that need it.
|
| In my area it is a school policy that a kid would not be
| denied food even if they had no money in their account -
| and every place I lived had organizations that would
| eagerly step up to address such a problem if and when it
| manifested.
|
| For what it is worth, during COVID and a few years after,
| in my state every kid got free lunch in school regardless
| of their income.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| It is rare for poor people in rich countries to starve to
| death, but missing meals and going through periods of
| hunger is unfortunately not uncommon at all.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| In a recent study by the USDA, Household Food Security in
| the United States in 2022[1], it is estimated that "17.0
| million house-holds were food insecure" (meaning that
| "they had difficulty at some time during the year
| providing enough food for all their members because of a
| lack of resources") and "5.1 percent of U.S. households
| (6.8 million households) had very low food security"
| (meaning "food intake of some household members was
| reduced, and normal eating patterns were disrupted at
| times during the year because of limited resources").
|
| That's 17 million HOUSEHOLDS that struggled to provide
| food and 6.8 million HOUSEHOLDS that had to skip meals. I
| wouldn't call that rare.
|
| [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-
| details/?pubid=107...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >In rich countries it is rare for poor people to go
| hungry because food is cheap compared to median income
|
| People say this as if we don't have direct statistics
| about how hungry poor americans are.
|
| Maybe your ASSERTION that poor people should have enough
| food because "it's cheap" isn't right and you should
| investigate that.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Clearly, but they're saying that only attempts to explain
| why those particularly in poverty had the associated
| results. When referring back to the original study's
| actual claims it was more than just correlation with
| poverty incomes, it was claimed for all incomes and not
| so obviously linked to food insecurity.
| cma wrote:
| OP says:
|
| "Some folks did a study with 900 people. They found the
| same correlation that the original study did. But when
| they controlled for household income, they found most of
| the correlation disappeared."
|
| So original study didn't control for income. If the
| original study claimed it across all incomes, and then it
| mostly went away when others controlled for income, then
| the delayed gratification strong correlation wasn't
| really for all incomes, right?
| Guvante wrote:
| Food insecurity is in the definition of poverty in most
| places.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| No, you are the one claiming something in your original
| comment. What the person you are responding to is
| insinuating is that what you are claiming is more of the
| same pseudoscience as the original study.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Could you list some specifics because I cannot follow you
| at all
| brigadier132 wrote:
| This is your comment:
|
| > More simply: people who grow up hungry learn to eat
| whenever they can because being hungry is awful
|
| > It doesn't even need to generalize. This is just a
| basic food security thing and is part of the reason why
| obesity is counter intuitively common among people who
| suffer from food insecurity.
|
| Share the study that backs your assertions. If you don't
| have a study then everything you've claimed has no
| scientific basis.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37040535/
|
| > Share the study that backs your assertions. If you
| don't have a study then everything you've claimed has no
| scientific basis.
|
| How about "that sounds interesting, could you cite a
| source?"
| fragmede wrote:
| yeah but that's too simple. as an adult who wants to live as
| long as possible, if I have to choose between eating one meal
| today or being able to eating two meals next week, I'm going
| to ask who the psychopath is that's imprisoned us, because we
| live in normal world and why would I ever be in that sort of
| a situation? Seriously, think back to as early as you can
| possibly remember, then as the marshmallow question. then ask
| it again to yourself, again and again, until your parents
| bringing you into a strange room with some weirdos, saying
| these are your parents now and have a marshmallow, isn't
| traumatizing
| 1659447091 wrote:
| An extreme personal observation of this was my grandmother,
| who grew up during the Great Depression with 9 siblings. They
| managed better than most and helped out neighbors (having
| both land and descending from farmers); she would in her
| later years (when I knew her) have massive stockpiles of
| processed long-shelf life food stored everywhere. Also, all
| the pickled/preserved food from her garden that was left
| over. For the longest time, I thought it was common to have
| multiple freezers, and a couple fridges, in a garage stocked
| with food. Including, months old leftovers from cooking
| enough of whatever soup/stew for 4-5 full families.
| to11mtm wrote:
| It's true but it winds up carrying in weird ways. (my family
| history is awkward but suffice to say the main reason we
| weren't called out for being broke all the time was a factor
| of my mother being very involved in communities... perhaps it
| was her penance for her actions in causing the situation in
| the first place?) On top of my family history, treatment for
| what was then-misdiagnosed ADHD caused me to literally lose
| just about everything but my job and car in 2011... Lots of
| months eating ramen, cereal on sale, and baked beans.
|
| As an example: my parents bought used Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler
| products and my brothers first used Jeep wound up being a hot
| mess that caused a large blast radius. I purchase the
| cheapest 'new' vehicle that fits my needs [0] and only bought
| one used car (as a backup for all the fun accidents my ex-
| wife got into.)
|
| As another more painful example: My first few years in the
| workforce alongside student loan debt, _then_ alongside the
| 2008 crash, on top of my adolescent observations an helping
| my now-ex-wife through college, caused me to wait way way way
| to long to start contributing to my future retirement.
|
| Semi-positive counterpoints:
|
| 1. I buy stuff that lasts, it takes more research and
| sometimes more up front but as I get older it saves me more
| and more money compared to people who live in a more
| disposable culture. I'm not afraid to shop/wait for deals and
| I make sure to think about every major purchase I make. I
| take good care of stuff I own.
|
| 2. I've been able to learn how to fix a -lot- of stuff
| (working at a bike shop helped) and it has both saved me
| money and save waste in general.
|
| 3. I can fit all of my mementos -and- important stuff
| including work desk (aside from bed/couch/etc) in a portable
| storage unit if needed.
|
| [0] - Except the WRX, that was a 'my life is in a terrible
| spot but I survived a year'. OTOH I got a base model with
| only a couple options and it was <30k before taxes.
|
| > part of the reason why obesity is counter intuitively
| common among people who suffer from food insecurity.
|
| Bigger elephant in that room is the nutritional content
| provided to people in that category as well as access to that
| nutrition.
| queuebert wrote:
| In Table 3, being white is a very significant predictor
| (p=0.007) of being able to wait at least 7 min, but in Table 7
| they don't report white among the races at all. Does this mean
| the difference among white kids is entirely explained by SES
| and other covariants? Conversely, does this mean being black
| has an effect not explained by other covariants? That seems
| pretty controversial.
| toss1 wrote:
| >> less reliable/continuous/predictable access to material
| things, meaning they would rationally seize immediate
| opportunities rather than taking the risk of a larger future
| opportunity
|
| THIS -- the environment definitely changes what is the most
| rational behavior.
|
| In economics, this is Counterparty Risk -- the risk that the
| other party will fail to fulfill their obligation. E.g., as a
| vendor it is rational to accept a piece of plastic from a
| complete stranger without a word, because the issuer of the
| card is good for the money, and has taken on the problem if the
| buyer doesn't pay their bill that month.
|
| For kids in affluent stable households, it is rational to
| expect that they'll get the second cookie in 20 minutes.
|
| For a kid in an unstable household, being told by someone who
| neither looks nor talks like they do, that they'll get two
| cookies in 20 minutes, it's often rational to take what you can
| get _NOW_.
|
| The marshmallow test measures mainly environmental counterparty
| risk in everyday events.
|
| Seems when controlling for those factors, the 'marshmallow
| effect' disappears.
|
| This is good science. Discover an effect. Generate a
| hypothesis. Keep testing until you find the limits of that
| hypothesis, and/or hidden variables.
| quotemstr wrote:
| It's more of the same slop we've seen for decades from the
| social sciences. We know most traits are heritable. We know
| that low time preference yields higher lifetime earnings. Of
| _course_ an experiment is going to show no effect when it
| controls for the effect! What else would you expect?
| eezurr wrote:
| And they never factor in time and place. Cultures vary annd
| change. Every 10-20 years the US is a different country.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Yeah. The reality is exactly the opposite of the headline. The
| study is confirmed, not refuted. Low time preference is
| heritable no matter what you believe the mechanism might be.
| keybored wrote:
| I don't know about children but it makes sense that poorer
| adults have worse impulse control. Poorer people have more
| worries and less to look forward to. Maybe a 12-hour workday
| rather than an eight-hour one.
|
| I'm sure that overworked wealthy people have plenty of vices,
| i.e. "poor impulse control". But they have successful careers
| so those things are coping mechanisms, really. It's
| compartmentalized.
|
| In any case my cynicism would just be vindicated if a study
| just turned out to rationalize (as an emergent property
| because, duh, there is a population overlap between researchers
| and this group) the position of the upper-middle class.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The acoup blog series on medieval agrarian societies made an
| interesting point that resonated with me.
|
| Things that look like failures in long term planning (to
| people with resource surpluses) can actually be optimal
| decisions (to people without resource surpluses).
|
| In that case, it was the observation that maximizing currency
| profit from farming in a society that experiences arbitrary
| taxation and repeated famine is useless -- if no one has food
| then no one will sell you any, assuming your saved currency
| hasn't already been seized.
|
| In contrast, optimizing for familial and social ties were
| much more reliable ways to see yourself through then-common
| perils.
|
| If you're poor and don't have a stable living situation,
| delaying gratification presents risks to you. (ones that
| people with money and stability don't have to consider)
|
| Sometimes people are dumb, but sometimes they're optimizing
| for factors others are oblivious to.
| jkolio wrote:
| People might reply, "Well, take the risk," without
| acknowledging that risk is two-dimensional. There's a range
| of success and and range of consequences. Something
| traditionally considered "high risk", like investing
| millions of a billionaire's money in a start-up, might have
| low consequences for the direct investor. It sucks if the
| start-up fails, but they're still a billionaire, probably.
| Their lifestyle doesn't change substantially. Compare to a
| low-income worker choosing a car: maybe a cheap used one
| that could break down at any time, or a more expensive one
| is less likely to break down (if you stay up-to-date with
| expensive maintenance), or a much more expensive new car
| that is unlikely to break down (but that puts them in a
| substantial amount of debt). In every case, there's a way
| for the prospect to go sideways in a manner that would
| likely end with the worker losing their job, with
| (statistically-speaking) no savings cushion. However you
| rank the risk of each (at least one being the lowest
| financial risk), you have high negative potential
| consequences.
| watwut wrote:
| My impression is that people who say "take risk"
| literally always mean "take bets where you have little to
| loose and a lot to gain". And they look down on people
| who took actual risk and lost.
|
| What "take risk" means is that you should try to be
| entrepreneur in situation where you can fall back and be
| well paid programmer again if it does not work out. Or
| that you should risk someone elses money.
|
| EDIT: I guess good rephrase would be that "take risk"
| usually means "overcome irrational fear when you are in
| perfectly safe situation". That is what actually people
| mean.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| > I'm sure that overworked wealthy people have plenty of
| vices, i.e. "poor impulse control".
|
| I once watched a movie about this called The Wolf of Wall
| Street
| knallfrosch wrote:
| "worse impulse control"
|
| or better grabbing-opportunity skills. If you repeat the
| experiment and the "doubling" of the marshmallow turns into
| "a teen barging into the room and stealing the marshmallow",
| who'd be the wiser kid?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The teenager is a good metaphor for what your creditors
| will do when they find out you have enough money to make a
| payment.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Poor people are better at cash flow management. That's why
| poor people like the dollar store. They're not dumb. They
| know you can buy soap in bulk at Costco, but buying a small
| $1 bottle is better than the 55 gallon barrel to manage cash
| flow.
|
| Likely this is related to the marshmallow. I need to eat. I
| will eat it now. I cannot guarantee the marginal return on
| more marshmallows. I mean maybe if real life was like "wait
| one minute and double your money" people would do it, but
| typically it's like, lock up your cash for weeks, months,
| years at a time for margins, not for doubling your
| marshmallow count.
|
| In real life, realized savings or gains of 1 or 2 or 4
| percent for a 6 month wait is not worth the RISK of locking
| up that marshmallow (or T-bond) when having that marshmallow
| locked up may result in say, no housing.
| dmurray wrote:
| This was posted 53 minutes ago and no one has given us the
| Vimes Boots Theory of Economics yet?
| astrange wrote:
| Don't believe everything you read. Fiction isn't real.
|
| There's an opposing wise saying too:
| https://kottke.org/10/10/andy-warhol-on-coca-cola
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > Poorer people have more worries and less to look forward
| to.
|
| The authors in a book "The Poor Economics" make a similar
| assertion. It did make a lot of sense to me.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Are cause and effect reversed?
| keybored wrote:
| Does cause start from the Big Bang or from where you/I want
| it to?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > poorer adults have worse impulse control
|
| I would dispute that line of thinking. Wealthier people who
| are used to getting what they want when they want it would
| have worse impulse control. Poorer people are used to having
| to wait already.
| momojo wrote:
| I'm reminded of one of the stories from "Poor Economics"
| (Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, ISBN:
| 978-1-58648-798-0).
|
| Consistently, those in poverty (living on < $1 per day) do
| not simply 'try harder' to save and make better financial
| decisions by being restricting their impulses. Instead they
| find clever ways to outwit themselves.
|
| One mother in India, intent on accruing $2000 (?) for her
| daughter's dowry, knew she didn't have the willpower to "just
| save $200 per year over 10 years", though her annual income
| was greater than $200.
|
| But she had the foresight to take out a $2000 loan from a
| bank, immediately move it to a saving account, and pay back
| the bank. The interest on her loan was almost like an
| extrinsic-motivation fee.
| amelius wrote:
| > The obvious conclusion is that household income is a
| predictor of both
|
| Could you please add if you think the prediction goes in the
| positive or negative direction?
| hinkley wrote:
| One of the big psychology books mentions this study. Maybe
| Thinking Fast and Slow?
|
| All it tells you really is whether the person has to grab what
| joy they can now because their life experience has taught them
| that promises about tomorrow sometimes do not come. You see
| that marshmallow, you enjoy it while you can.
|
| And that's also ignoring the joy of small things. Three
| marshmallows is as enjoyable as fifty. So now you need to
| decide if one is enough joy or if you should wait for ten or
| whatever the reward is.
| slibhb wrote:
| > The obvious conclusion is that household income is a
| predictor of both:
|
| > - inability to delay gratification, and
|
| > - higher academic achievement
|
| > This makes sense when you consider that someone growing up in
| a poor household may have both:
|
| > - less reliable/continuous/predictable access to material
| things, meaning they would rationally seize immediate
| opportunities rather than taking the risk of a larger future
| opportunity, and
|
| > - less academic support
|
| While this is all true, there's another factor that no one ever
| brings in: wealthy people are likely to possess attributes that
| lead to wealth accumulation like conscientiousness,
| intelligence, ability to delay gratification, etc. Those traits
| are quite heritable, so their children are likely to have
| higher income.
|
| People are allergic to the idea that outcomes have something to
| do with heritable characteristics. And allergic to the idea
| that economic success is related to positive personality
| traits.
| enavari wrote:
| It's both. Higher household income means better nutrition for
| their children (which also maxes out your genetic
| disposition), better education, more secure attachment, focus
| on careers, etc, in addition to the points you raised.
| elromulous wrote:
| Good points. But you know what's _even_ more heritable than
| those traits? Wealth.
| rvense wrote:
| Some people attribute success to raw ability. You get good
| grades because you know the material, you get the job
| because you're the best at doing the work.
|
| There's also a component of giving others the perception
| that you're capable. Seeming smart, navigating the politics
| of a school or workplace, fitting in. A lot of this seems
| like it's obviously learned, and that affluent people will
| be ahead.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > wealthy people are likely to posses attributes that lead to
| wealth accumlation like conscientiousness, intelligence,
| ability to delay gratification, etc. Those traits are quite
| heritable, so their children are likely to have higher
| income.
|
| It's just as likely that proximity to these characteristics
| is sufficient. As heritable as those might be, inheritance of
| assets is protected by law. What more heritability is needed?
|
| > People are allergic to the idea that outcomes have
| something to do with heritable characteristics.
|
| Heritable only through learned behaviors, imitating family.
| Too many playboys squandering grandpa's hard-earned wealth to
| think otherwise. The right lessons just weren't taught for
| some. Positive personality traits do relate to economic
| success, but too few who have those have the parenting skills
| to transfer those to the next generation. Their genes
| certainly aren't doing the heavy-lifting.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Assets are typically inherited long after the income
| generating years have been determined. You could argue that
| the promise of high likelihood of a future inheritance
| event affects choices (and I'd agree that a positive
| effect), but I think most people receiving inheritances of
| notable size are middle-aged.
| sulandor wrote:
| > This makes sense when you consider that someone growing up in
| a poor household may have both:
|
| the inverse makes equal 'common sense':
|
| wealth begs complacency and indifference
|
| yes, there may be a correlation but i bet it's insignificant as
| the factors playing into this are just too numerous.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > But when they controlled for household income, they found
| most of the correlation disappeared.
|
| This does not really prove much, since attitudes to long-term
| gratification are probably shared within households due to the
| effect of idiosyncratic cultural factors, which might affect
| both income and academic achievement. One would need to look
| for a "natural experiment" where divergence in income was
| totally exogenous and not due to any shared factor in order to
| conclusively resolve the issue.
| watwut wrote:
| And trust. Does the kid trusts the researcher they will
| actually get more marshmallows? Or is their life experience
| such that adults promise candy and then dont deliver?
| whyenot wrote:
| > _The obvious conclusion is that household income is a
| predictor of both..._
|
| Correlation, but of course, not causation. We need to be very
| careful about storytelling, especially when it comes to
| behavioral studies, where it's easy and intellectually
| satisfying.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Yup, I fell into the same trap I was pointing out :(
|
| I should have said something like "it's just as plausible
| that ...".
|
| My main point is that these 3 studies don't provide any
| evidence that teaching someone willpower will help with other
| life outcomes.
| astrange wrote:
| > But when they controlled for household income, they found
| most of the correlation disappeared.
|
| Controlling for things is mostly bad statistics, although of
| course all social science is bad statistics.
|
| Confounding variables are bad controls more often than they're
| good ones, so controlling for them introduces collider bias.
| Also, finding a result and then controlling for something is a
| multiple comparison fallacy.
|
| The correct thing to do is to have a theory of causation and
| then design a study that's capable of detecting it, not the
| other way round.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| In this case household income is the _parents '_ household
| income, so it can't be affected by the child's (future)
| academic achievement.
|
| Can controlling for household income introduce collider bias?
|
| (Sorry I know the words you're using, and a few years ago I
| started reading Pearl's book, but I did not finish it and do
| not have a strong grasp of the concepts.)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > household income is a predictor of both: > - inability to
| delay gratification, and
|
| I'm not sure we can draw that conclusion. Household income is a
| predictor of higher education -- that is well established --
| and higher education as a child could mean you are more likely
| to have learned lessons on the benefits of waiting vs instant
| gratification (the principle behind savings and investments).
|
| So higher education _might_ be correlated with delayed
| gratification, but not household income itself.
| yodon wrote:
| I can speak to this test a bit from experience: as a very young
| child, I was in a pilot study used to design a large longitudinal
| study, and my younger sibling was in that large longitudinal
| study.
|
| At about age 4, I ended up literally maxing out the delayed
| gratification test and being sent home with a ridiculously large
| bag of M&M's, much to this dismay of my mom.
|
| With that as context, I wonder whether some of the changes/lack
| of reproducibility are actually measures of decreasing economic
| mobility and economic agency within the US.
|
| Early studies on ability to delay gratification were done during
| the favorable economic conditions baby boomers grew up in. More
| recent studies were done in eras with far less economic mobility.
|
| It's quite likely you'd see a smaller effect today, not because
| the impact isn't there, but because it's so much harder today to
| make a significant upward change in your economic status.
| dekhn wrote:
| Many details of this particular experiment made me greatly reduce
| my confidence and interest in social science. I was trained up in
| quantitative biology- and when I look at studies like this, I see
| a long list of "things that could go wrong, leading the
| investigator to falsely conclude their hypothesis is true". But
| in this case, I think the investigator actually didn't care
| enough about doing high quality research- they simply started
| with a moral belief/value judgement and ran an experiment and
| chose to interpret the results to support their "hypothesis". And
| the nature of social science is such that it's really hard to
| truly run an "honest experiment".
| swatcoder wrote:
| You can read over a hundred years of extensive, exhaustive
| criticism of most social "sciences" for exactly that reason,
| and many of us grew up with a categorical understanding of a
| difference between "hard" material sciences like physics and
| chemistry and "soft" sciences like social sciences and many
| subdomains of biology and medicine.
|
| But that distinction has largely fallen out of the zeitgeist
| and many people now just take anything ever published in a
| "scientific journal" as sound.
|
| It represents a _huge_ regression in scientific literacy among
| the public and sets us up for people becoming increasingly
| skeptical of "hard science" conclusions because so much of
| what they've incorrectly come to accept as science never really
| was.
| tash9 wrote:
| True but there has been a movement towards replicating these
| high profile findings in the soft sciences. Hopefully that
| will gain more traction as a lot of the "newsworthy" studies
| are forced to get retracted after failing to replicate.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| > people becoming increasingly skeptical of "hard science"
| conclusions
|
| A big problem is that "hard science" conclusions often only
| apply to very specific circumstances, but scientists and the
| general public then extrapolate to more generic situations.
| The consequence is that a lot of things that are supposedly
| based on "hard science" aren't really proven at all, it's
| just someone making educated guesses.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| PSA: There's also a severe replication crisis in the hard
| sciences. The high horse is not well warranted.
| chairhairair wrote:
| Completely false equivalence. The entire foundations of
| modern Psychology are wobbling. In order for the same to be
| true for the hard sciences we would need to be failing to
| replicate experiments which hinge on germ theory, atomic
| theory, the standard model, etc.
|
| Nothing like that is happening. This false equivalence
| originates from several types of people:
|
| 1. Journalists that want/need to foment the largest
| possible catastrophe.
|
| 2. Political pundits which want/need to discredit some
| field.
|
| 3. Social scientists playing defense.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| What exactly do you think are the foundations of modern
| psychology? Serious question.
|
| There are _tons_ of non-replicable findings way, way
| further down the stack than psychology, and those tend to
| have _a lot_ more relying on them than psychology
| /sociology studies. If you're upset about scientific
| validity, consider directing your ire to where problems
| are more likely to actually hurt people -- the "hard
| sciences."
|
| Nice ad hominem but I'm none of those things. I work in
| clinical trials, one of the few areas where we actually
| do have to _know_ things, and a very good empirical
| demonstration of exactly how incredibly difficult that
| is.
| elliotto wrote:
| I'm curious to hear your perspective on the validity of
| psychology / psychiatry / sociology as someone adjacent
| to the field.
|
| I am a hard science maths / data science guy, but unlike
| a lot of my peers I have a great interest in softer
| reasoning (philosophy, ethics, political science etc).
| But I am constantly disappointed by how tainted by
| ideology psychology and psychiatry feel (and economics,
| but this is a different discussion).
|
| Do you think that psychology and psychiatry are held to
| the same rigour as harder sciences and should be
| considered as valid?
| enavari wrote:
| True, but I remember reading the replication failure rates
| were twice as much in the social science than in medicine.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| We constantly see small medical studies (<100
| participants) posted here on HN that produce exciting
| results, which then disappear from view and/or fall apart
| when replicated with larger cohorts.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| Depends what you count as hard science. The replication
| rate in high energy particle physics is near 100%? When the
| LHC started up they were able to measure nearly all of the
| particle resonances found in the 20th century. It's not
| like they suddenly disproved the existence of electrons or
| something.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Sure, further down the stack of chaos that is the
| universe (physics -> chemistry -> biology -> psychology
| -> sociology), it's much easier to conduct controlled
| experiments.
|
| That doesn't mean the people engaged in research at the
| bottom of the stack are good and the people at the top of
| the stack are bad. Nor does it mean we shouldn't be
| trying our best to understand things near the top of the
| stack.
| superposeur wrote:
| > it's much easier to conduct controlled experiments.
|
| Very true. But this means _more_ statistics and controls
| are necessary to get solid result from a social science
| experiment then a particle physics experiment, no?
| Clearly, this is practically impossible, but there you
| go.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > Clearly, this is practically impossible
|
| No it's not? You put more money into the studies and you
| can do bigger, better versions of them.
|
| A major obstacle to putting more money into studies:
| people jerking themselves off about how soft sciences are
| a joke and hard sciences are Super Serious Business.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| But why do those fields deserve more money, when at least
| a large part of the problem is cultural.
|
| One example is the famous reluctance to publish negative
| results in psychology. Nearly all published results in
| (collider) particle physics are negative.
|
| If senior faculty prefer to only hire people with a
| string of published postive findings, you are literally
| encouraging p-hacking. Again, they are not "bad" people,
| it is just that the system the senior people have setup
| in that field is not conducive to doing good science.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > But why do those fields deserve more money
|
| Because it'd be good to understand what makes people
| happy, for example. Or what enables relationships to
| thrive. Or when different forms of government are
| suitable or unsuitable to solve a set of problems, etc.
|
| Sorry to break it to the hard-sciencers, but the vast
| majority of opportunities left in the western world to
| improve people's lives is not particle accelerators, it's
| answering questions like: "what actually helps people
| feel satisfied in life, loved in their relationships, and
| belonging in their community?"
|
| > At least a large part of the problem is cultural
|
| Is it? Why so?
|
| Negative results aren't published in almost any field,
| and that's actually a good on ramp to the discussion we
| _should_ be having, which is about the broken incentives
| of science and scientific publishing specifically. The
| broken incentive model isn 't special to softer sciences
| and it has far more dire consequences in other domains.
|
| You can't possibly think that soft sciences are the only
| ones hiring people with a string of positive results...
| right?
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I agree that studying psychology better could be
| beneficial. Is it possible? Or more to the point, is it
| merely a matter of money, as you said?
|
| I said a large part of the problem is cultural, I did not
| say that psychology is the only field with cultural
| problems. I'm not sure how you got that idea.
| superposeur wrote:
| > Sorry to break it to the hard-sciencers
|
| Believe me, you aren't "breaking" anything to anyone. If
| you could solve the secret of happiness (your example),
| no amount of money would be too small.
|
| The issue isn't whether social science would be good to
| figure out. Definitely it would, to the extent there is
| actually a "thing" to figure out, which may be true and
| may not; i.e., "what makes people happy" may be so
| contingent and/or so ineluctably open to interpretation
| that it makes no sense as a rigorizable concept. (There
| is nothing wrong with unrigorous concepts, btw, these
| have been fruitfully explored by the poets and
| philosophers and therapists.)
|
| Ok, so even granting that there is a stable, rigorizable
| "truth" for the social sciences to discover, the issue is
| whether the methods and analyses as they have been
| practiced are effective or even could be tweaked to be
| effective. Clearly, they aren't. And not just a few bad
| apple studies, but seemingly the whole darn lot.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The question of "do those fields deserve resources" is
| answered as follows: are there interesting questions in
| those fields that we should ask and have answered (well)?
| I think the parent poster is saying: yes, there are.
|
| This question is orthogonal to the question of whether
| the organizations currently conducting research in those
| areas are well-organized. You could fund them well and
| also demand re-organization as a condition. You could
| even find other scientists to do this work. But if you
| don't think the work is important, none of this matters.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| That is fair. Is what you suggest possible though?
| smegger001 wrote:
| As my sister who is studying one of the soft sciences put
| it to me when i pointed out the lack of rigor compared to
| the hard. "sure we could make psychology a hard science
| but pesky ethics boards wont approve me raising batches
| of several hundred human clones in controlled environment
| for each test"
| superposeur wrote:
| I mean, a psych experiment will never have an N
| comparable to a particle physics experiment or be able to
| reach the 5-sigma threshold for discovery that now
| prevails in physics. On the other hand, the object of
| study for psych is intrinsically interesting since we are
| people and if something reliable can be gleaned then it's
| certainly worth money. My concern is that "bigger,
| better" (as you say) would have to include millions of
| people across cultures and times, tracking
| longitudinally, with randomization and controls. (Again,
| more complexity requires _more_ statistics, not less.).
| Is this practical? Maybe ...
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I didn't claim that it means they are "bad" whatever that
| means.
|
| I am saying that we should take those claims less
| seriously, especially if the results from that domain
| don't replicate, as in the case of psychology and other
| social sciences.
|
| Maybe there is little we can conclusively say about those
| domains.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Yes we're in agreement on this.
|
| There was little we could conclusively say about _any_
| domain until long term, concerted effort was made to
| understand each of them.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| Anecdotally, I have a friend that's doing bio-chem
| doctorate and she has said that replication rate on that
| is abysmal for biology, chemistry and consequently bio-
| chem.
|
| I'm sure some areas of physics have near 100% and some
| simply don't.
| treflop wrote:
| Did the public ever read published papers until recently? I
| can't imagine most people having access to any publications
| until the Internet and late 90s at minimum.
|
| My local library did not exactly have access to journals
| either.
|
| I don't think scientific literacy has ever been high. Society
| relied on other publications and the government to interpret
| the information for us. For better or worse.
| darby_nine wrote:
| > You can read over a hundred years of extensive, exhaustive
| criticism of most social "sciences" for exactly that reason
|
| There's nothing essentially non-scientific about the fields;
| it's just harder to control variables. The entire "hard
| science" vs "soft science" beef is a little silly when "hard
| science" isn't equipped to reason about most human concepts.
| Try not to chuck the baby out with the bathwater. I'd prefer
| to stop differentiating between the two ends of the spectrum
| as if they're inherently different.
|
| I also find that people who poo-poo "soft sciences" still
| have strong beliefs about humans, society, etc, they just
| don't even bother trying to ground them in evidence.
| bena wrote:
| Hell, even the "Dunning Kruger effect" is a misapplication of
| statistics.
|
| The effect shows up even with randomly generated samples.
| Because there are floors and ceilings to the data. If you're
| low, you can only guess so much further down, so you're likely
| to overestimate your ability. If you're high, you can only
| guess so much further up, so you're likely to underestimate
| your ability.
| superposeur wrote:
| Yes, the devil _always_ seems to be in the details in
| psychology experiments. Were the experimenters giving subtle
| cues to the child, and was this simply a test at how deftly the
| child picked up these cues? What was the exact wording of the
| "deal" offered to the child and would a wording change alter
| the results? Was the experiment conducted at a time of food
| scarcity or abundance? What were the prevailing cultural norms
| of how a child "ought" to behave? Would the results change if
| average child age was 6 months older or younger when experiment
| was conducted? What was in the drinking water and the air and
| the paint at the testing site? (With strong claims in the
| literature that all these are correlated with measures such as
| average population IQ!)
|
| In the face of all these potential confounders, _more_
| statistics and controls seem necessary than, say, in a physics
| collider experiment on electrons (each electron possessing
| exactly two characteristics, location and spin, and all such
| electrons behaving identically regardless of location or time).
| Yet, even in this setting of simplicity and reproducibility,
| physicists have still found it necessary to establish a
| stringent, five-sigma threshold for discovery -- 3 sigma
| anomalies come and go. Such a stringent threshold is
| unthinkable in psychology due to practical considerations.
| Ergo, it's hard for to see how psychology can become a reliable
| empirical science.
| paulcole wrote:
| I mean let's get real. This particular experiment is pretty
| irrelevant to how you feel.
|
| There's nothing that could be done in social science that you
| wouldn't be skeptical of and want to dislike.
| watwut wrote:
| I have read from BOTH psychologists and sociologists
| criticizing this concrete experiment for years. It was popular
| among internet crowd of fancying themselves as "cool nerd kids"
| who play experts on everything. But if you read more boring
| write ups by actual scientists, they complained for years.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| So in a nutshell, one of the greatest failings of science in
| history comes down to, researchers were under pressure so they
| caved and compromise their ethics and morals.
|
| Even worse, the replication crisis is only one reason that the
| public has continued to lose faith in science in the post truth
| era.
|
| It's also the disinformation campaigns that set out to attack
| whatever's in a groups interest whether it be politics or the
| environment.
|
| Maybe the coup de grace will be social media which encapsulates
| people into bubbles seemingly impenetrable to the truth.
| nyrikki wrote:
| This result could happen without any intentional conduct, so
| ironically you may have made a similar error as the original
| researchers.
|
| While there are very real issues about reproducibility and
| motivation, rarely do studies actually claim what pop science
| puts in the headlines.
|
| Popper has a better approach with the idea that evidence cannot
| establish a scientific hypothesis, it can only "falsify" it.
|
| It is actually how we write computer programs in the modern era
| too.
|
| The Scientific realism camp is committed to a literal
| interpretation of scientific claims about the world, but others
| like myself consider it confusing the map for the territory.
|
| But that is the realm of philosophy and not science.
|
| While the time scale and wasted effort from the flawed original
| paper is regrettable, this is the process working in the long
| run.
|
| This paper's falsification is the process working, irrespective
| of some claims of 'ethics and morals'
|
| Studies about humans will always be subject to problems,
| exactly because of ethics and morals, e.g the tuskegee
| experiments.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| Of course it's not all intentional. And it may not even be
| unethical by their standards as far as certain kinds of
| p-value hacking are allowed and journals are sometimes are
| hesitant to call out problems.
|
| But there's been a huge amount of questionable behavior and
| there has to be personal responsibility with that. It's not
| an overstatement to call this part of one of the biggest
| failures of science in history, and you can't just sweep that
| under the rug as unintentional.
|
| As far as pop science I'm not addressing that but those sins
| don't exonerate everything else.
|
| I don't get what you mean about Popper either, he likely
| would've been all over the reproduceability crisis and
| calling out integrity as a key issue.
|
| Yes, science is self-correcting and things have definitely
| started to improve after learning from all of this. But the
| damage has been done. at the time when we need science, the
| most it's been discarded by a significant part of the
| population.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'd like to see the 2024 version where the kid who got two
| marshmallows is fat and the one who didn't want any marshmallows
| at all is skinny.
| reginald78 wrote:
| Funny interpretation. The single marshmallow kid derided for
| having no self control or ability to delay gratification was
| actually harnessing the offered deal as a form portion control
| to maintain a healthy weight.
| paganel wrote:
| By this point all the normal people have started ignoring this
| type of "science", many of us were ignoring it from the very
| beginning. Too bad that this quackery has already made its way
| into many States' apparatuses, see the obsession about the nudge
| thing, for example.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Imagined childish reasoning: I could eat one marshmallow now, and
| hopefully finish this stupidboringweird test sooner and go home.
| Or I could be stuck here longer, for one crappy little
| marshmallow, showing that I know how to play a stupid suck-up
| little teacher's pet.
| trallnag wrote:
| How is this childish reasoning?
| bell-cot wrote:
| No interest in gaming the test, to make himself look better
| to grown-ups.
|
| Obviously short attention span. And no filter on his
| emotions.
|
| (Which is not to say that it's wrong. Unless you're at
| serious risk of starvation, a marshmallow is only a feeble
| token reward.)
| aqsalose wrote:
| From abstract (article is paywalled)
|
| >Although modest bivariate associations were detected with
| educational attainment (r = .17) and body mass index (r = -.17),
| almost all regression-adjusted coefficients were nonsignificant.
| No clear pattern of moderation was detected between delay of
| gratification and either socioeconomic status or sex. Results
| indicate that Marshmallow Test performance does not reliably
| predict adult outcomes.
|
| I guess the question is whether the covariates that were adjusted
| for in the regression are true confounders and not, say,
| something caused by ability to delay gratification.
| Banditoz wrote:
| I'm confused. How do you access the full text of the article? Why
| is it behind a $15 charge?
| fragmede wrote:
| why do you expect it for free? what is a reasonable charge, in
| your eyes?why is _that_ charge reasonable and $15 isn 't?
| Banditoz wrote:
| I don't know. Usually I see arxiv posted a lot here, and I
| can access those without issue.
|
| If I do pay, do the authors of the paper get my money?
| ska wrote:
| > If I do pay, do the authors of the paper get my money?
|
| In general, no.
| KerryJones wrote:
| Because there is usually an effort in HN to post non-
| paywalled links.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Sadly Shy-Blub is cucked too, doesn't have it...
| FredPret wrote:
| Some fields of study will always be art, not science.
|
| Literature, art, human psychology. A good writer, artist, or
| therapist can make a truly great contribution. But they cannot
| conduct disciplined experiments and establish truth numerically.
|
| And that is OK.
|
| What is not OK is the cabal of academic psychologists who don't
| even know that they're full of shit because they aren't trained
| in any of the numerical / "hard" disciplines. (Hard as in well-
| defined, not difficult).
| dfedbeef wrote:
| That test was already broken a decade ago by Kidd. The
| socioeconomic part of it is BS and has been known to be for a
| while.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Try it on shareholders.
| photonthug wrote:
| This is actually a really great point. If successful people can
| delay gratification, how do we explain enshittification
| generally? Running a good company into the ground while
| enjoying temporary gains is not delayed gratification, and yet
| the people that are in charge of such things are successful by
| other metrics (Ivy League, ceo, etc). It's the marshmallow writ
| large which is pretty funny. Looks like we all delay
| gratification if and only if it actually serves us, otherwise
| snatch greedily at whatever is in reach
| sunjieming wrote:
| Virtually every study I read about in AP Psych in HS failed to
| replicate - including this one. That whole class in hindsight was
| at best a waste of time and at worst provided bad info to make
| life decisions on
| resource_waste wrote:
| The reputations of these authors need to be dragged through the
| mud.
|
| Daniel Kahneman's Wiki page doesnt make him look out to be a
| fraudster, despite him confidently mentioning studies that
| never replicated, despite him signing off on fake data from
| other fraudsters.
| sunjieming wrote:
| Thinking Fast and Slow was blowing my mind until I started
| running into more and more studies that I knew didn't
| replicate. It took on a Freakonomics/Gladwell vibe after that
| KerryJones wrote:
| Apologies for ignorance, can you tell me more about
| Gladwell issues?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| That's not how science works. If you doubt the result, do
| your own experiment and publish it. The reputations will take
| care of themselves.
|
| Obviously signing off on known-fake data is straight up
| lying, which must remain in a different category than simply
| doing a study that doesn't replicate.
| poindontcare wrote:
| hahahaha!
| spiderice wrote:
| When Dieter Uchtdorf was in the presidency of the LDS branch of
| Mormonism he gave a talk to the entire church about this study.
| It's since basically become doctrine in the LDS church. Funny how
| far and widespread these inaccurate studies can become. And the
| large majority of the people who hear the original study will
| never hear that it wasn't reliable.
| tqi wrote:
| I've never understood the "so what" of this study. Did people not
| think self control was a virtuous characteristic before? Will
| they stop trying to teach their kids to exercise self control now
| that it's been debunked?
|
| Sometimes it feels like much of social psychology exists
| primarily to sell books and lecture series tickets.
| tqi wrote:
| (that said, i'd love to see a study to see if there is a
| correlation between ability to resist wading into contentious
| comment threads on hackernews can "reliably predict adult
| functioning")
| honkycat wrote:
| I've always thought this was stupid and obviously not real.
|
| What if the child was being playful by not following the obvious
| "correct" path? Wouldn't that point to someone who is social and
| humorous and happy? Isn't that an advantage?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Wut? I gave up all those marshmallows for nothing?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| I think all of these studies fail to account for the credit
| component. i.e. I can see that this man I just met has one
| cookie, but now he's promising me another cookie (which I may or
| may not be able to see). And then if I do what he says, he'll
| give me two cookies. What probability do I assign to the chances
| he can deliver on his promises? Maybe he's a liar. Maybe before I
| completed the assigned task, he came across a better deal and
| allocated all his cookies.
| tsavo wrote:
| To your point, there are multiple assessments being made, many
| of which not being accounted for in the original.
|
| Does the listener fully comprehend "the rules" as they're being
| laid out?
|
| The listener is evaluating the trusthworthiness of the speaker?
|
| The listener may evaluate their own skills in pulling off a
| deception by taking the marshmallow and lie about it. Due to
| "the rules" laid out by the speaker, does the listener consider
| they may change "the rules" (influenced by their historical
| experience with adults)?
|
| Does the listener place any value on a 'marshmallow' at all,
| maybe a toy, or a type of item previously identified as having
| high value would lead to different results?
|
| Adjusting for variables in the 'fuzzy' sciences can be
| difficult due to the innate subjectivity.
| sandspar wrote:
| >dynamite psychology result with far reaching conclusions fails
| to replicate
|
| No way?
| Mozai wrote:
| I remember growing up getting into scenarios like the Marshmellow
| Test, but I didn't learn to delay gratification; what I learned
| was I'm a sucker if I wait or make sacrifices. Often "you'll get
| two later if you surrender this one now" became "there is no
| second marshmellow and you're not getting the first one back."
| How many times do other kids have to experience this before they
| learn not to delay gratification? and thus get accused of "poor
| impulse control" when I'd call it "learning from experience" ?
| niemandhier wrote:
| Children that trust the adult making the promise tend to be able
| to delay their own gratification:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26799458/
|
| From a game theoretic point of view it makes sense:
|
| If your internal model of adults suggests, that you should put a
| gausian prior on the waiting time until they keep their promise,
| i.e. most adults in you life tend to keep their word, waiting
| makes sense.
|
| If however your experience tells you to assume a power law as
| prior, cutting you losses after a time is perfectly rational.
|
| This has a certain beauty, since it would mean that success in
| life correlates with dependable parents and given the temporal
| component I actually would assume causality.
| oglop wrote:
| Yeah, a fucking marshmallow won't do much to predict you future.
| Family wealth does.
| aristofun wrote:
| No wonder, generally speaking. Human nature is way deeper and
| more complex, more fluid than any artificial model/framework
| imposed on it.
|
| Psychology is not a reproducible science strictly speaking for
| that reason.
| xbar wrote:
| Calling it a test is almost certainly an exaggeration at this
| point.
|
| Perhaps we could call it "The Marshmallow Trick" now?
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