LIV.

"Imagine that it is 1970 and you are a four-year-old child in an experiment being conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University. You are brought into a room at your preschool where a nice man gives you toys and plays with you for a while. Then the man asks you, first, whether you like marshmallows (you do), and, then, whether you’d rather have this plate here with one marshmallow or that plate there with two marshmallows (that one, of course). Then the man tells you that he has to go out of the room for a little while, and if you can wait until he comes back, you can have the two marshmallows. If you don’t want to wait, you can ring this bell here, and he’ll come right back and give you the plate with one; but if you do that, you can’t have the two. The man leaves. You stare at the marshmallows. You salivate. You want. You fight your wanting. If you are like most four-year-olds, you can hold out for only a few minutes. Then you ring the bell.

...Children who were able to overcome stimulus control and delay gratification for a few extra minutes in 1970 were better able to resist temptation as teenagers, to focus on their studies, and to control themselves when things didn’t go the way they wanted."

© Jonathan Haidt
"The Happiness Hypothesis" (2005)