The Marshmallow Test: Why Self-Control Is the Engine of Success

"Sigmund Freud said that the chief developmental challenge of childhood is to be able to delay the gratification of certain impulses and to negate certain impulses altogether. That’s what allows you to achieve maturity as an adult. Nobody had figured out how to test that until Walter Mischel. The marshmallow test is one of psychology’s greatest experiments, conducted by one of the twentieth century’s greatest psychologists, Walter Mischel. He created a test where children were given the choice: Do you want to eat one treat, or several? All the kids in the experiment—and I really mean all of them—chose the bigger pile. Walter would then say: You can have the bigger pile, but you have to just wait until I do something in the other room and come back. Then, he would ask, ‘Do you want to wait?’ And again, all the children say, ‘Oh, I can wait!’ Walter would leave the room and observe what would happen next. Many children gobbled a marshmallow as soon as he stepped out. Some children were able to wait two minutes, seven minutes, even fifteen minutes. Then Walter followed these kids through life. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The ability to wait predicted a wide range of life outcomes, just like Freud and Walter hypothesized. How long you sat—the ability to delay gratification—predicted the quality of your friendships, your physical health, and whether you would go on to commit a crime, along with a whole host of other positive outcomes in later life. It’s not just about the marshmallow test—it’s autobiographical, too. He talks about his struggles with self-control and how he developed his experiments. It’s fascinating. But the best reason to read this book, and I think the reason why his books remain perennially popular, is because Walter packed his whole life’s work between two covers. It integrates all his studies, all his wisdom. It’s a wonderful thing that we still have the book, because we lost Walter."