Passing the Marshmallow Test May Be More About Smarts Than Self-Control, Study Says

The historic “marshmallow test” has tied young children’s ability to delay gratification to their long-term success, but a new, larger study replicating the famous study puts those long-term results in doubt.

Using a significantly larger and more diverse group of children than the original study, researchers from New York University and the University of California, Irvine, compared 4-year-olds’ ability to delay gratification to their academic and behavioral progress in 1st grade and at age 15. They found, in a study in the journal Psychological Science, children’s early ability to delay gratification was linked to their later academic achievement, but not to later behavior, impulsivity, or attention control.

In the wake of Walter Mischel’s original findings in 1990, schools across the country have sought to use the experiments to teach students about the importance of delayed gratification to self-control and self-regulation—some even going so far as to have older students try out the experiment themselves. (The original study found the ability to delay gratification increases naturally as children age.)

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