Our Marshmallow Experiment

A post by Indiana . . . 

In episode 06, we reference the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, which was a research project conducted in the 1970's by Stanford University regarding the concept of delayed gratification. Basically young children were taken into a room, given one large marshmallow on a plate and then were given two options: (1) they were told they could either eat the marshmallow immediately or (2) wait until the researcher returned and if they hadn't eaten the marshmallow, they would be given an additional marshmallow and could therefore eat two. Various renditions of this experiment have been conducted, and lots of other people have done it just for kicks just to see what their kids would do. Here are a few of my favorites from Youtube: 1, 2, 3. 

During our last podcast episode, which was all about rules and rule followers / breakers, Chris and I wondered how our kids would fare during The Marshmallow Experiment, so right after yesterday's naps, I put them to the test. Click Caroline's cute face to play the video below: 

Granted, we didn't make our kids wait the standard 15 minutes and my verbiage was different because rather than giving them an unweighted choice, I made my own preference pretty clear. This was because we were more interested in seeing if our kids were "rule followers" when it comes to delayed gratification. However after seeing Jude's so sad face at the 3:00 mark, I don't think I'll repeat the experiment implementing the 15 minute time frame. Nonetheless, it's pretty stinking cute, huh? How about it? Anyone else want to try The Marshmallow Experiment on their kids?