Monday, May 25, 2009

Don't Eat That Marshmallow!

So, what is the determining factor in lifelong success? Talent? Intelligence? Creativity? Self-confidence?

According to psychologist Walter Mischel, the real key to success is the willingness to sit in a room with a marshmallow for 15 minutes without eating it. Here's the story of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment: DON’T!

2 comments:

James R said...

However, the one with the highest I.Q and the most successful, must have been the guy who cleaned out all the toys and the candy.

Peter H of Lebo said...

This marshmallow experiment in the 60s likely inspired the one seen in the Nova series "Ape Genius". The series illustrate that humans under the age of four like apes can not control impulses, in fact apes often outperform toddler humans in various experiments. However by the age 4-6 humans learn to control their impulse behavior, permitting them the ability to recognize other humans as teachers and gain the ability to learn. Apes never achieve this control and the farthest learning method they learn is copycatting which is crude and can not transfer generational. Controlling our emotions is one reason for our higher intelligence function. The experiment is seen in chapter 4, the whole series is amazing, apes are frighteningly intelligent. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/apegenius/program.html