What Do Marshmallow Tests Mean Anyway?

Now that psychology researcher Walter Mischel has died, it's more important than ever that we should understand his marshmallow study findings. Education writer Alfie Kohn did that back in 2014, and updated his article more recently.

Mischel's conclusions were not about the children's grit or ability to delay gratification, but their ability to distract themselves... which correlates well with intelligence, and so finding later that kids who waited got higher SAT scores isn't much of a surprise. Mischel was particularly interested in how the kids distracted themselves.

Kohn also discusses other research on the context that might make a child less trusting that the second marshmallow will be given, which could also account for eating the first marshamallow.

Interesting stuff, and good to have available next time someone talks about grit and blah blah blah.