Resisting the Marshmallow

In a lot of the work that I do as a coach, I help people develop systems to resist doing things that bring short-term rewards, but that have long-term negative consequences. A dieter who wants to eat a brownie instead of an apple. A spouse who wants to jump to judgment and blame instead of compassion and patience. A nervous public speaker who convinces a coworker to give her presentation instead of giving it herself.

Last month, the New Yorker featured an article with an interesting twist on the skill of resisting. In the 1960s, Dr. Walter Mischel performed a set of experiments with four-year-old children, in which he told them they could either have one marshmallow immediately, or wait for a few minutes while he stepped outside and then be given two marshmallows when he returned. The catch: while waiting, the marshmallow sits temptingly on a plate in front of the child. Some children gave in to temptation and ate the marshmallow, and others waited. Mischel followed these children throughout their lives, and found that the children who did not wait for the marshmallow tended to score lower on their S.A.T.s, have behavioral problems, and had difficulty maintaining friendships.

The ability of the children to resist the marshmallow, Dr. Mischel reasoned, boiled down to their ability to "strategically allocate attention." In other words, the children who successfully waited for the marshmallow were able to divert their attention away from thoughts of the marshmallow. Some covered their eyes, others played games by themselves (such as hide-and-go-seek), and some sang songs. The children who sat, fixated on the marshmallow, tended to eat the marshmallow.

There seems to be nothing innate about a child's ability to direct their attention; Dr. Mischel proposes that parents unconsciously teach their children how to distract themselves. Looking back on my own childhood, two events stick out in my mind as having taught me how to distract myself: 1) the agony of waiting for Christmas morning, starting around December 20, and 2) tolerating getting loose teeth pulled and splinters plucked from my hands and feet. Without focusing on my toys, the spot my dad missed while shaving that morning, or the latest episode of Sesame Street, these events would have been much more onerous.

So the key to resisting the temptations of our grown-up lives, according to Dr. Mischel, is to become better at metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Instead of thinking about the brownie, how much you hate your spouse's parents, or how scared you are of making that presentation, think about last night's episode of The Office, how cute your dog is, or what you are going to cook for dinner.