Mindframe

In last week’s post , we learned how Walter Mischel’s famous marshmallow test demonstrated that preschoolers with a willpower strategy fared much better later in life across a wide spectrum of circumstances than their counterparts who “ate the marshmallow.” So are the marshmallow eaters among us doomed to a life of constantly giving into our temptations? Not necessarily, says Mischel. Willpower, or more accurately, a strategy for maintaining one’s willpower, is a skill that can be developed and practiced at virtually any age. The clues to building your own willpower system can be found in Stanford’s Bing Nursery preschoolers, who tested and proved many methods during the original marshmallow experiment. The next time you need to reach for some self-control, you might consider using one of the following as a template. Out of sight, out of mind Among the marshmallow resistors, pushing the marshmallow to the far end of the table and/or closing their eyes was a po...

Although he didn’t realize it then, when Walter Mischel and his team turned their attention to preschoolers at the Bing Nursery School on the campus of Stanford University in the 1960’s, he unleashed a tidal wave in cognitive science, which is still being felt today. The experiment was pretty straightforward. A preschooler was seated at a table and presented with a single treat of some kind—a cookie, a piece of candy, or—most famously—a marshmallow. The child was told that the supervisor would soon be leaving the room. If the child could resist eating the marshmallow until the supervisor came back, they would get a second marshmallow. If they instead ate the marshmallow, there would be no opportunity for another.  Mischel was conducting a basic test in postponement gratification, and whether five year olds were able to demonstrate any kind of strategy for self-restraint, the willpower necessary not to gobble up that first tempting marshmallow. As you might imagine, ...

General Patraeus, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Jonah Lehrer, Tanya Harding: an incomplete list of those who, at the peak of their careers, and the peak of their honors and accolades, fell from grace. The names and details may change, but scandals are forever. No matter what, you can rest assured that someone somewhere is about to take a tumble in the eyes of their local community—or the public at large. Yet each time it happens, many of us are stunned. Those we saw as the embodiment of a myriad of virtues—courage, self-restraint, fair-mindedness, perseverance, and humility—fail to live up to the ideal.  It can feel almost like a betrayal: just who are these individuals, and how did they manage to dupe us?   A more realistic question might be, “Why do we believe virtuous traits are immutable? Why are we convinced that, once demonstrated in one arena, a quality will apply across the board to a variety of very different circumstances?” Tiger Woods shows amazi...