Psychologist who put marshmallows in front of kids to study delayed gratification

For preschool children, it was torture. There was a marshmallow in front of them and their only task was not to eat it. Sitting watching their agonies, hidden behind a one-way mirror, was Walter Mischel. Throughout a series of experiments at Stanford University in the 1960s he recorded how they coped. Each child knew that if they held out long enough, they would get either two marshmallows or a better treat, but – as Mischel’s careful notes show – doing so was often unbearable.

‘‘Enrico tipped his chair far back against the wall, banging it nonstop while staring up at the ceiling with a bored, resigned look, breathing hard, seemingly enjoying the large crashing sounds he was making,’’ wrote

Mischel of one subject. Another held an external monologue, arguing against giving in to temptation.

The most successful children were those who could distract themselves, by singing or talking. ‘‘In one dramatically effective selfdistraction technique,’’ he said, ‘‘after obviously experiencing much agitation, a little girl rested her head, sat limply, relaxed herself, and proceeded to fall sound asleep.’’ She, we now presume, had a bright future ahead of her.

What made this investigation into delayed gratification so influential was not what was written in those first accounts, but what was discovered decades later. When Mischel returned to those first subjects he found something profound. Their ability to hold out in those early experiments was an important predictor of their success in life: apparently influencing everything from obesity to exam results.

So it was that the legend of what became known as the ‘‘Marshmallow Test’’ began.

Part of its appeal was its simplicity. Worried middle-class parents could conduct their own versions of the test, then fret about the troubling implications if their toddler did reach for the marshmallow. Another reason for its appeal was the promise of redemption: all was not lost if your child guzzled early – as subsequent experiments found, willpower could be taught.

These lessons found their way on to television. In an episode of Sesame Street, the cookie monster, a late convert to pop psychology, was shown controlling his rapacious urge for biscuits – as a model in delayed gratification. Mischel himself used such techniques to control his habits. He said he had successfully tamped down his cravings for chocolate mousse by imagining the dessert covered in cockroaches.

However, even as the experiment, just a small part of Mischel’s life’s work, was gaining in popularity, there were mutterings that too much faith had been placed in a small sample set, taken from a nursery populated largely by the children of Stanford professors.

Just before Mischel’s death a larger and broader study provided the first strong evidence that too much had been extrapolated from this single work: that destiny was not marshmallows after all. It showed that there were more complicated factors involved and that many of the findings disappeared when you factored in things such as class.

Walter Mischel was born in 1930 in Vienna, the son of Salomon Mischel and his wife, Lola. His earliest memories were of a kind, but largely absent, father and a mother who spent her time lying on the sofa with an ice pack pressed to her forehead, complaining about ‘‘bad nerves’’. He and his brother were looked after, instead, by a ‘‘grim German’’ lady who did not take kindly to their jokes.

The arrival of the Nazis in 1938 gave him bigger problems than cross governesses. On one occasion, his father and other Jews in the neighbourhood were dragged into the street in their pyjamas and forced to engage in a mock ‘‘parade’’ to celebrate a Jewish festival.

It was pure chance that saved the family. While going through old papers they found a certificate of US citizenship belonging to his maternal grandfather. This was their salvation from the gas chambers, a ticket to a new life. This serendipity informed his outlook from then on. ‘‘Like the terminal cancer patient whose life is unexpectedly saved, on most days it has given me an almost embarrassing Pollyannaish view of life,’’ he later said.

In America, the family’s life was reset. His father never really got over the loss of status. Once a successful businessman, he now subsisted by running a local ‘‘five cents, ten cents and up’’ store. The young Mischel too yearned for progress in his life. At school he was voted most likely to succeed and worked extremely hard.

This eager-beavering took him to New York University and, eventually, into psychology. It was one of the most exciting periods for the discipline. During the 1950s and 1960s, old certainties were crumbling. While at Harvard, Mischel said things got ‘‘crazy’’ with the ‘‘turn on, tune in, drop out’’ movement. Psychedelic drugs started arriving in the post and graduate desks were replaced by mattresses.

His reticence, however, about the academic utility of magic mushrooms should not be confused with conformity. Throughout these years, Mischel had been growing uneasy about the discipline. Psychology had developed a set of lofty theories based around fixed personality traits, but he found that these rarely seemed to coincide with observed behaviour. The real world kept disobeying.

He began to challenge some of the key assumptions of psychology, arguing that personality traits were not fixed in the abstract, but depended on situation. ‘‘The aggressive child at home may be less aggressive than most when in school. The man exceptionally hostile when rejected in love may be unusually tolerant about criticism of his work.’’ Mountain climbers might be hypochondriacs, entrepreneurs unwilling to take social risks. In other words, separating personality from the situation a person was in was, he said, futile.

At Harvard, Mischel had met and married Harriet Nerlove, who moved with him to the west coast where they had three daughters: He divorced Harriet, who was also a psychologist, after more than 30 years of marriage. He is survived by his daughters and his partner, Michele Myers, who is a writer.

The Marshmallow Test attracted criticism from the beginning. Was it really testing willpower? Or might it be testing trust? After all, if you didn’t believe that the person conducting the experiment would reward you, why not guzzle now? For people from poorer and more unstable backgrounds, taking the marshmallow in the hand over two in the bush may be a rational strategy.

A much larger replication published this year failed to find results that were as strong as Mischel’s original. The study also found that willpower did not seem to be a clear indicator of children’s later success, independent from intelligence and background. The debate continues but, as Mischel knew better than anyone, that’s how science works.

psychologist b February 22, 1930 d September 12, 2018

Walter Mischel said he had successfully tamped down his cravings for chocolate mousse by imagining the dessert covered in cockroaches.